Worktop installation in Mawneys

Yes. Mawneys is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM7. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The chimney breast has almost always been taken out of the kitchen with the stack left standing above it, so that bay of wall is newer plasterwork on a different plane. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The shell has the last word on fitting day. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Offered up twice, bonded once.

A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. 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 gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop replacement ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A missing sink stops eight kitchens, not one. 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. 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.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The laying order follows the shape. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Sealant seals. It does not fit. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. 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. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. A cleared crew arrives with its paperwork done.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Scribed one piece at a time.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. One datum for every run in the room.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Ceilings are high in these, so wall unit heights and splashback heights are open choices rather than things the room has already decided. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. Old fabric gets handled as old fabric.