Worktop installation in Hanworth

Yes. Hanworth is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW13. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

There is usually a shared rear alley, and whether the gate onto it is unlocked decides whether long pieces come in from the back. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. The shell has the last word on fitting day. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw.

The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. The parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house.

A U puts the sink in one leg, the hob in another and any drainer grooves in whatever is left, which spreads the cut-outs about but does not reduce the machining time. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Access is checked against the longest piece first. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The signature at the end belongs to somebody with authority.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Eased in, never forced.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The boiler has usually been moved into the kitchen at some point, with its flue through the outer leaf and its pipework surface run to the nearest corner. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The room is swept and the offcuts leave with us.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. The two returns in a U are close to the same size and it is tempting to nest them side by side, except that the veining then mirrors across the room and reads as deliberate for the wrong reason. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always.