Worktop installation in Highams Park

Yes. Highams Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E4. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Waltham Forest. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

These kitchens have been retiled at least twice, and stripping the tiles takes the bottom band of plaster with them because the old laminate ran underneath rather than up to them. 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. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly. 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. 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.

Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. We would sooner lift a gate off its hinges than force a piece past it. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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 van does not stay on a main road once it is empty.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence. 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. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens.

It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together. 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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access rules can differ from one door to the next.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. 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. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The last piece in has the least tolerance left.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. Support goes in before stone does, so whatever steel, plywood or extra noggin the shape calls for is fitted while the room is still empty. Access is checked against the longest piece first.