Worktop installation in Teddington

Yes. Teddington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW11. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

A good number have a garage attached to the flank wall with a door through from the kitchen, which is both a way in and a stretch of wall the run cannot use. 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. The age of the house sets the pace of it. A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set.

Concierge buildings want the goods entrance, a booked lift and proof of insurance, all of which is straightforward when it is asked for a week out. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The last trade in inherits every delay before it. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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.

A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. 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. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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 tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. 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.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. The gas meter box is fixed to the flank wall beside the alley and stands proud enough to matter when a long piece is coming past it on edge. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Ceilings run to about two point four metres, so wall units, a splashback and an extractor are all competing for the same short band of wall. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. The slow parts are slow for a reason.