Worktop installation in Lea Bridge

Yes. Lea Bridge is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E5. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Ceilings run to about two point four metres, so wall units, a splashback and an extractor are all competing for the same short band of wall. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment.

A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop replacement. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. That family has lived on a building site long enough. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The managing agent books the lift, not the household.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. The consumer unit and the meter tails often sit in a cupboard in the corner of the kitchen, and that cupboard has to stay reachable whatever goes in around it. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. A dry-lined wall hides a void, and the void gets bridged.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Suspended floors at the front meet a solid slab in the extension somewhere in the middle, and the units sit across the change. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Sink and hob seated and sealed before we go.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. A missing sink stops eight kitchens, not one.