Worktop installation in Tooting Bec

Yes. Tooting Bec is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW17. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Many were built with a solid sub-floor to the rear rooms, so the kitchen floor is concrete and level while the front of the house is suspended timber. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Levelled first, then set, then sealed. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun.

Where the turn inside is tight the piece gets turned on the path and brought in already on edge, which needs room in front of the door as well as behind it. 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. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. 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. The day is built around that window.

It is inside the three we do most here, under worktop fabrication. Either way: same template, same workshop, same fitters. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The last trade in inherits every delay before it. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn.

Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A corner that will not close is never forced. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall. 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. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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. The managing agent books the lift, not the household.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. There is usually a step down into the back addition, so the kitchen floor and the hall floor are not the same level and neither of them is flat. 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.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Pieces are carried in the order they are laid.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The return is offered up last.

Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. Book us when the units exist, not when they are ordered.