Worktop installation in North Woolwich

Yes. North Woolwich is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E16. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These buildings have firm rules about what can be propped open, left in a lobby or carried through the residents entrance. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. Old fabric gets handled as old fabric. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The awkward metre takes the longest.

Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every re-grip is a chance to chip a piece, so they are planned out. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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 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. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. 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.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut. Book the service lift and loading bay with the building manager for the whole fitting window, and have the fob or key for lift override ready. Access in a tenanted flat depends on the tenant, so the template and fitting dates are agreed with whoever actually holds the keys. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Owner or agent, somebody has to be reachable.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. Sealed before we leave.

The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The room is square, the walls are plumb and the floor is flat, so almost every complication in the job belongs to the building rather than the kitchen. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The last piece down is the one nearest the door.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. The kitchen usually sits along the internal spine of the plan with the glazing at the far end, so the run itself has no window and no daylight on it. If the diagonal is short we either split the run with a planned join or, on lower floors, carry up the stairwell, which needs the half-landing turn checking as well. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Overhangs are measured off the finished carcass.