Worktop installation in North Cray

Yes. North Cray is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. 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 first hand off the van is the one holding the clock. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Windows are small and set deep, which leaves the run under them dark and the reveal too deep for a plain square end. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected. Where the structure cannot be cut into, the stone is relieved instead, and a relief that deep changes both the yield off the slab and how the piece is handled. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond.

Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary. 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. 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.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. 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. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Eased in, never forced. Give us the hardest, shortest approach to the door you can, clear of parked cars, and warn us of any soft ground, steps or gravel on the route. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A day out of use, told to whoever lives there.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Solid walls hold their heat and their damp, and anything sealed against them is worth looking at again a season later. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The whole run is dry-fitted before any adhesive is opened.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. 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. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The day is built around that window.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. A period cottage has low ceilings, thick rubble-filled walls and a floor that has never been level, and the worktop is the thing that has to look straight. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. The tops go on level even when nothing else is.

Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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.