Worktop installation in North Ockendon

Yes. North Ockendon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is. 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. The tops go on level even when nothing else is. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The way in is walked with a tape before the van is opened. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. 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.

It is one of the three that come up most, though worktop fabrication comes up more. Nothing changes between them: same template, same workshop, same installers. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The void ends whether we have finished or not. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear.

Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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 template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Big rooms hide their falls, and the difference from one corner of a five metre floor to the other is measured in tens of millimetres. 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.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Banisters and door frames are padded before anything moves.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. We would rather ask than guess.

If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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.