Worktop installation in Monks Orchard

Yes. Monks Orchard is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0, BR3. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. The carry length sets the number of hands on the job. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

A service duct runs between the kitchen and the bathroom stacked above it, and access to that duct stays open whatever the layout does. The carry is the constraint. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Sealant seals. It does not fit.

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. Pieces wait on trestles until the fitters call for them. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Back-to-back slots need every flat ready on the first day. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The awkward metre takes the longest. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Owner or agent, somebody has to be reachable.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. The kitchen doorway is usually offset into a corner, so one leg of an L is short before anyone has designed anything. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The route is walked before the first lift.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. The external wall is a concrete panel with a modest window, so the run under it sits in a shallow reveal with a hard cill. Deck access or a single narrow staircase with tight half-landings means long pieces get walked up on edge, and the landing turn is checked before we commit. Fixings go into what the wall actually is.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. 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 join is the last thing finished.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Front doors off the deck open into a lobby barely wider than the door itself, and the turn out of it is a right angle. The stairwell half-landing is usually the tightest point on the whole route and it dictates the maximum piece. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork.