Worktop installation in Havering-atte-Bower

Yes. Havering-atte-Bower is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM4. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. Van to door is the distance that matters. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

A two-up two-down has a kitchen that was never designed to be one, so the run is short, the ceiling is low and every millimetre of depth gets argued over. The day is planned backwards from the hall. What the building will take decides how it is fixed. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads.

A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. Where the van stands sets how the day runs.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The prep list is not optional.

An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Scheme rules on working hours are checked first.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. There is usually a step down into the back addition, so the kitchen floor and the hall floor are not the same level and neither of them is flat. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The first hour is protection and packing, not stone.

Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. The hall is cleared before the first piece comes off the trolley.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Every unit gets a level on it before a piece lands.

Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Cottage terraces have no hall to speak of and the front door opens almost straight into the room, which makes the carry easier and the protection harder. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. The age of the house sets the pace of it.