Worktop installation in Sydenham Hill

Yes. Sydenham Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE26. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Floors are boards over joists with a solid floor only in the service rooms, and the two meet somewhere in the middle of the kitchen. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. Settlement is packed out, never levered out. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Mark it, lift it, cut it, offer it up again.

Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. 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 crew waiting for a space is a crew being paid to wait.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop fabrication. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. 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. The last trade in inherits every delay before it. 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 date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn.

Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun. Give us the hardest, shortest approach to the door you can, clear of parked cars, and warn us of any soft ground, steps or gravel on the route. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked around the tenant, not around the owner.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink does. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. A corner that will not close is never forced.

Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. 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. Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The carry length sets the number of hands on the job.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall.