Worktop installation in Sands End

Yes. Sands End is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Block and beam floors with blockwork walls are true enough that the scribes are light and the joins can be pulled tight. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. The tops go on level even when nothing else is. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall.

A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. We would sooner lift a gate off its hinges than force a piece past it. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The void ends whether we have finished or not.

It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Scribed one piece at a time. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. Book the service lift and loading bay with the building manager for the whole fitting window, and have the fob or key for lift override ready. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The room cleared before the crew arrives.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. No money changes hands before the template. Riser panels, wall boxes and the boiler cupboard sit in fixed positions the developer will not move for a worktop. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Door fronts and stone edges get checked against each other first.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The room is square, the walls are plumb and the floor is flat, so almost every complication in the job belongs to the building rather than the kitchen. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The whole run is dry-fitted before any adhesive is opened.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. That is what the morning is planned around.