Worktop installation in South Norwood

Yes. South Norwood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE25. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. 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. Time lost at the kerb never comes back later in the day. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded.

An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. 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 short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. 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 drive and a red route make two different fitting days.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement. 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. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear. 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. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The island is set against the perimeter, not a wall. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see. 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. Planned programmes run several kitchens in sequence, so template, fabrication and fitting move as a rolling operation and one uncollected key holds up more than one flat. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A cleared crew arrives with its paperwork done.

The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Lower ground floor kitchens are reached by a stair with a winder in it, and the head height over that winder is lower than the room at either end. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Silicone finishes the job; it does not rescue it.

If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. 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. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. Fire doors stay shut, so the carry route is longer.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A step up off the pavement means the piece is lifted to the threshold before it is carried anywhere, and that first lift is the one that wants four hands. 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.