Worktop installation in Stonebridge

Yes. Stonebridge is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW10. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The landing serves two or three front doors that open outward onto it, so the space to turn a piece at the top of the flight is not entirely yours to use. The carry is the constraint. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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.

A short run of external steps before the communal door means a piece is lifted twice before the staircase proper has even started. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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 van does not stay on a main road once it is empty.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The void ends whether we have finished or not. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. 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.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The step between rooms is packed out first. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. A leaseholder paying for their own kitchen inside managed stock still needs the freeholder to consent, and that consent is about the building and the common parts rather than about the worktop. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Owner or agent, somebody has to be reachable.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Nothing bears on plasterboard.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. The external wall is uninsulated in the blocks that have not been refurbished, and the corner it makes with the flank wall runs cold enough to show behind a cupboard. Deck access or a single narrow staircase with tight half-landings means long pieces get walked up on edge, and the landing turn is checked before we commit. Settlement is packed out, never levered out.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. 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. The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The hall is cleared before the first piece comes off the trolley.