Worktop installation in Thornton Heath

Yes. Thornton Heath is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR7. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. 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 first hand off the van is the one holding the clock. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. The day is planned backwards from the hall. A dry-lined wall hides a void, and the void gets bridged. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment.

A fitted stair carpet is either lifted or covered, because grit trodden into it under work boots does more harm than the carry itself. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The hall is cleared before the first piece comes off the trolley. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop replacement first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Handover day is a hard stop. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Ceilings are generous and the rooms are narrow, so the runs are long, the aisle is tight and there is nowhere to stand a slab on edge. 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.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Suspended timber floors flex underfoot, and anything that moves beneath a unit shows up later as a lipped join. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The whole run is dry-fitted before any adhesive is opened.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Pieces are carried in the order they are laid.