Worktop installation in Sidcup

Yes. Sidcup is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA14, DA15. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. 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 van does not stay on a main road once it is empty. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Deep timber window boards were fitted throughout and they stand proud of the plaster, so a top reaching the window meets a stepped edge rather than a flat one. 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. The shell has the last word on fitting day. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The awkward metre takes the longest.

Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. We would sooner lift a gate off its hinges than force a piece past it. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Time lost at the kerb never comes back later in the day.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The void ends whether we have finished or not. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear.

A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. One datum for every run in the room. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

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. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access confirmed rather than assumed.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. There is nothing to pay before the template visit. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The original plan put a larder and a back door on the same wall, and both leave awkward stubs once the room is opened up. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Every unit gets a level on it before a piece lands.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. 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. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. The hall is parquet or original boards in a good many of these, and it is the surface that takes the traffic for the whole of a fitting day. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. Old fabric gets handled as old fabric.