Worktop installation in Honor Oak Park

Yes. Honor Oak Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE23, SE4. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Visitor permits are issued to the household rather than to the trade, so the ones the day needs come from the customer and are best in hand the week before. 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. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The internal stair is usually a straight flight with a tight top landing, and it is the landing rather than the flight that is the limit. The carry is the constraint. Levelled first, then set, then sealed. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. It is the slow part of the day and it should be.

The top step is rarely the end of it, because a door swinging out onto the landing has to be held back before a piece can come off the flight. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. None of it is worked out on the doorstep. A bay suspension carries a fee and a notice period, and the notice period is the part that catches people out when a date moves. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. We would rather start at seven than argue with a warden.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. 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. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens. 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. A tenant moves in on the date on the contract.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Pieces are carried in the order they are laid. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Offered up twice, bonded once. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Emptying the room belongs to the keyholder, not the crew.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The ceiling is a concrete soffit with a skim on it, so there is nothing to fix into overhead and no void to hide anything in. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Packers under the carcass, not shims under the stone.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The return is offered up last.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. A booked bay only helps if it is empty when we arrive.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. 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.