Worktop installation in Romford

Yes. Romford is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM1, RM7. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Ceilings are high in these, so wall unit heights and splashback heights are open choices rather than things the room has already decided. The day is planned backwards from the hall. A dry-lined wall hides a void, and the void gets bridged. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut.

A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The way in is agreed before the crew is booked, not after. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A slipped slot takes the next one with it. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access confirmed rather than assumed.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. No money is taken before the template happens. Suspended timber floors flex underfoot, and anything that moves beneath a unit shows up later as a lipped join. 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.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Chimney breasts and the alcoves either side of them break the run into short pieces before anyone has drawn a kitchen. Protection down, dry-lay, scribe, then bond: the order matters more in a difficult room than an easy one. Silicone finishes the job; it does not rescue it.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. A corner that will not close is never forced.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. Movement joints in the shell stay movement joints.