Worktop installation in Marks Gate

Yes. Marks Gate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM6. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. 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. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Ceilings sit at about two point three metres and the head of the window is close under them, so a unit over the window has very little wall to hold onto. The carry is the constraint. What the building will take decides how it is fixed. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Offered up twice, bonded once.

Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The opening is measured on the diagonal, not across the frame. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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 first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. 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. A missing sink stops eight kitchens, not one. 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. Back-to-back slots need every flat ready on the first day.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Support first, stone second. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Sealant seals. It does not fit. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A cleared crew arrives with its paperwork done.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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 awkward metre takes the longest.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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 laying order follows the shape.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Pieces wait on trestles until the fitters call for them.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. The gas enters at the back of the house and the pipe to the hob crosses the room at low level in a boxing along the skirting. Fixings into concrete go in with proper anchors, and the dust is contained rather than swept up afterwards. The age of the house sets the pace of it.