Worktop installation in Pollards Hill

Yes. Pollards Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW16, CR4. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

An ex-council house is solidly built to a standard plan, with the kitchen at the rear and a back door next to it. Deck access or a single narrow staircase with tight half-landings means long pieces get walked up on edge, and the landing turn is checked before we commit. That is the shape of the day. Closed-up hatches leave a shallow patch of new plasterboard right where the upstand lands, so fix through to the original blockwork rather than into the patch.

Cars park in courts and garage blocks set away from the front doors, so almost every job here involves a long carry along footpaths and through pedestrian alleys. Two-man handling with a slab trolley matters more than van proximity. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The prep list is not optional. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Sealed before we leave.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. 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.

Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door, communal or otherwise. Access for the whole slot, or a different day.