Worktop installation in Hammersmith

Yes. Hammersmith is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of the borough. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The meters sit in the hall or under the stairs on the way through, so the carry passes a cupboard door that has to be shut and protected before anything moves. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Carried once, and carried properly. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond.

A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Four hands or eight is settled before the tail lift drops. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

It is inside the three we do most here, under worktop fabrication. Either way: same template, same workshop, same fitters. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house.

Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Eased in, never forced. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Party wall settlement pulls the floor down at one side of the room, so a long run reads level at one end and not at the other. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Access, floor and wall in that order, then stone.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. It is the slow part of the day and it should be.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. No money changes hands before the template. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. Protection down, dry-lay, scribe, then bond: the order matters more in a difficult room than an easy one. The first hour is protection and packing, not stone.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together.