Worktop installation in Rush Green

Yes. Rush Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM7. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. 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. The kerb decides the start time. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Where the dividing wall has come out there is a steel over the opening and a nib of the old wall left at each end, and a run turning that corner has to clear both nibs. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Sealant seals. It does not fit.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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 falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Van to door is the distance that matters.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop replacement. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The void ends whether we have finished or not.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. 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. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The awkward metre takes the longest. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access confirmed rather than assumed.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. 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. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. The windows were steel to begin with and have been swapped for plastic in openings lined out to suit, so the reveal is now deeper than the brickwork behind it. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. The tops go on level even when nothing else 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. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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 scribe is cut on site or it is not cut.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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.