Worktop installation in North Ealing

Yes. North Ealing is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. 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. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. Getting in is straightforward, so the day is spent dry-laying and scribing to walls that have never been straight. The building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond.

The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. 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 front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop fabrication. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. Where several adults share the cooking the kitchen is in use most of the day, so a fitting slot has to be agreed with more people than usual. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear. Households sharing a house tend to want two prep areas rather than one, which usually means an island as well as a perimeter run. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it.

A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The join is the last thing finished. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. 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. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. It is the slow part of the day and it should be.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Support first, stone second.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Handmade brick and lime plaster move visibly along a run, and a straight-cut back edge shows it immediately. The carry from where the van can stand to the door is boarded wherever it crosses gravel, grass or a stone floor. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for.