Worktop installation in South Ealing

Yes. South Ealing is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. 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 parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The boiler has usually been moved out of the main house into the addition, and its flue, its pipework and its condensate all cross the wall the run wants. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set.

Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Someone stays on the trailing end the whole way in. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. 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. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear. 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. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it.

Side-return kitchens are long and narrow with one outside wall, and the wall the run sits against is often the oldest, least straight surface in the house. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The join is the last thing finished. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The slot belongs to whoever can open the door.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The last piece off the van is the first one fitted.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. The step or level change between the original room and the return is real, and the units need packing before stone goes across it. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Support first, stone second.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands.