Worktop installation in Tooting Graveney

Yes. Tooting Graveney 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 the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. 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. A crew waiting for a space is a crew being paid to wait. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. 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. The slow parts are slow for a reason. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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.

A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The last trade in inherits every delay before it. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A locked door costs the day, not an hour.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. 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 galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. The under-stair cupboard opens off the kitchen in most of them, and its door swing is the reason a corner run stops where it does. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. The house sets the order of work.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. The piece is offered up, marked, taken back out and cut, and that cycle can run twice before anything is bonded down. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.