Worktop installation in Peckham Rye

Yes. Peckham Rye is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE15, SE22. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Where the household has used up the visitor permits it gets for the year, the remaining options are a suspension or a paid bay and both belong on the quote. 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 parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These houses usually sit in their own grounds with a long approach, so the carry from van to door is longer than anything inside the building. 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 shell has the last word on fitting day. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A forced back edge cracks weeks later.

Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. 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. Estate roads inside a controlled zone are sometimes managed privately rather than by the council, which changes who has to be asked. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. 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. 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. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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.

Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The laying order follows the shape. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Mark it, lift it, cut it, offer it up again. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Protection goes down first.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Original joinery is deep and stands proud of the plaster, so the run is plotted to the units rather than to the wall behind them. 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. Old fabric gets handled as old fabric.

There is nothing to pay before the template visit. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Retrofitted underfloor heating goes into the new part of the floor and stops at the old part, so the build-up changes partway across the room. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Dust extraction indoors, or the cut happens outside.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Every re-grip is a chance to chip a piece, so they are planned out.

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 sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Scribed one piece at a time.