Worktop installation in Harlington

Yes. Harlington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB3. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A period cottage has low ceilings, thick rubble-filled walls and a floor that has never been level, and the worktop is the thing that has to look straight. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. The shell has the last word on fitting day. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication and worktop replacement. An annexe kitchen is often built to keep a parent independent, so worktop height and reach matter as much as the material does. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A slipped slot takes the next one with it. A family adding a self-contained unit is paying for the whole conversion, and the worktop is one line in a much longer job. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time.

Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is. Give us the hardest, shortest approach to the door you can, clear of parked cars, and warn us of any soft ground, steps or gravel on the route. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Keys confirmed the week before, not the morning of.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

Nothing is payable in advance of the template. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Original solid floors are quarry tile or flagstone bedded on ash, and they have moved with the ground rather than with the building. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The last piece down is the one nearest the door.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. 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 bonded until the whole run sits flat.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Doorways are low and narrow, which is a genuine constraint on piece length before anything else is considered. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. Old fabric gets handled as old fabric.