Worktop installation in Morden Park

Yes. Morden Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM4. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. 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. 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.

Original quarry tiles survive under a later vinyl in many of these, and lifting the units off them shows how far the floor has fallen towards the garden end. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. It is the slow part of the day and it should be.

Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. None of it is worked out on the doorstep. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement. 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. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary.

It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. 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 material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Offered up twice, bonded once. 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. Where the provider has set the specification the material choice was made once for a great many kitchens, and the useful work is meeting it exactly rather than proposing something else on the day. 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. One visit where permission only stretches to one.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Sealant seals. It does not fit.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. The outrigger shares a party wall with the addition next door for its whole length, so one long side of the kitchen is solid brick with another kitchen on the far side of it. 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. Where the wall bellies, the top is eased in against it.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. The piece is offered up, marked, taken back out and cut, and that cycle can run twice before anything is bonded down. The awkward metre takes the longest.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. 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. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. The crew size follows from it.