Worktop installation in The Wrythe

Yes. The Wrythe is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM5. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Sutton. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. The van does not stay on a main road once it is empty. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

The staircase rises over the back room in a good number of these, so a sloping bulkhead sits over one end of the run and a piece cannot be stood on edge beneath it. The day is planned backwards from the hall. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Nothing bears on plasterboard.

Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Nobody sets a worktop down mid-flight to change grip. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. Time lost at the kerb never comes back later in the day.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The last trade in inherits every delay before it. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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.

Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The awkward corner goes in first, not last. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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 groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Lath and plaster, a settled floor and a hall with a turn in it are the three things that decide how this job runs. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Door fronts and stone edges get checked against each other first.

Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. A two-up two-down has a kitchen that was never designed to be one, so the run is short, the ceiling is low and every millimetre of depth gets argued over. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. The building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The last piece in has the least tolerance left.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Protection comes up only when the last piece is inside.