Worktop installation in North Cheam

Yes. North Cheam is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM3. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Sutton. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

These went up as handed pairs, so in one house of the two the kitchen sits against the party wall and in the other it takes the alley side, and only one of them has an outside wall to work with. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. A dry-lined wall hides a void, and the void gets bridged. 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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond.

A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of it. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The way in is walked with a tape before the van is opened. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. A spotter on the van is a man off the tools.

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. 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. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary. 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. The prep list is not optional.

A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Scribed one piece at a time. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

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. Eased in, never forced. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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 day out of use, told to whoever lives there.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. It is the slow part of the day and it should be.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. A serving hatch through to the dining room was standard, and where it has been blocked up the patch sits on a different plane to the wall either side of it. 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. Movement joints in the shell stay movement joints.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. One datum for every run in the room.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. The larder had a cold shelf and an air brick straight through to the outside, and that brick is usually still open behind whatever now stands in front of it. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected.