Worktop installation in Heathfield

Yes. Heathfield is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW2. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The chimney breast served a back boiler and is usually still standing, so there is a shallow recess on one side of the room. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. The shell has the last word on fitting day. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. None of it is worked out on the doorstep. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Scheme rules on working hours are checked first.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The crew size follows from it.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. An inter-war terrace is wider than a Victorian one and shallower than a semi, so the kitchen is a compact square room rather than a galley. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. Old fabric gets handled as old fabric.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The join is the last thing finished.