Worktop installation in Surrey Quays

Yes. Surrey Quays is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE16. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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. An early slot is the cheapest parking arrangement there is. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Access is a question about the plot rather than the house: a narrow frontage between older buildings with nowhere obvious to stand a van. If the diagonal is short we either split the run with a planned join or, on lower floors, carry up the stairwell, which needs the half-landing turn checking as well. The age of the house sets the pace of it. Stud centres are almost never where the brackets would like to be, so fixing positions get set from the framing and the stone is designed to suit. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads.

The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. 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. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. A crew waiting for a space is a crew being paid to wait.

One of the three we are asked for most, although worktop replacement is asked for more. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn run. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Consecutive days, one kitchen at a time. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The building keeps working around us.

A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The return is offered up last. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A partition that gives when you lean on it will give under someone sitting at an overhang, and a bonded mitre nearby is where that movement shows first. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw. Book the service lift and loading bay with the building manager for the whole fitting window, and have the fob or key for lift override ready. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Notice periods decide the date more often than the workshop.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Block and beam floors with blockwork walls are true enough that the scribes are light and the joins can be pulled tight. The lift is measured before the piece is loaded, and once inside the flat the fitting is quick by comparison. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. 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. A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. Support goes in before stone does, so whatever steel, plywood or extra noggin the shape calls for is fitted while the room is still empty. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side.