Worktop installation in Strawberry Hill

Yes. Strawberry Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW1, TW2. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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 the van stands sets how the day runs. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Houses at the later end of this period went up in cavity rather than solid brick, so two that look identical from the road behave differently when a fixing goes in. 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. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Nothing bears on plasterboard.

Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Boards go down wherever a loaded trolley has to run. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. An early slot is the cheapest parking arrangement there is.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. Two households cooking in one kitchen means two of most things, and the run has to carry a second sink or a second oven without losing its working length. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together. An annexe kitchen is often built to keep a parent independent, so worktop height and reach matter as much as the material does. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house.

Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The awkward corner goes in first, not last. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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. Booked around the tenant, not around the owner.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The window over the sink sits at about worktop height, so the run is set out around the sill and the reveal rather than under them. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. A bad floor is corrected under the carcass, never with sealant.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. 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. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. A corner that will not close is never forced.

Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. A family adding a self-contained unit is paying for the whole conversion, and the worktop is one line in a much longer job. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it.