Worktop installation in Rise Park

Yes. Rise Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. 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. 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 kerb decides the start time. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The kitchen was laid out around a copper and a larder, so it has more small openings and less continuous wall than its floor area suggests. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun.

Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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 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. 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. Van to door is the distance that matters.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A slipped slot takes the next one with it. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time.

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. Packing goes under the units, not under the stone. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked with whoever actually holds the keys.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. 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. 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. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Clamps close the joint, colour match settles it.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. 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.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. Support goes in before stone does, so whatever steel, plywood or extra noggin the shape calls for is fitted while the room is still empty. Waterfall legs are set before the top is bonded down.