Worktop installation in Tooting

Yes. Tooting 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 permit is a digital session rather than a paper one, somebody in the house has to start it at the hour the van actually arrives. 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 work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

An ex-council house is solidly built to a standard plan, with the kitchen at the rear and a back door next to it. The carry is the constraint. Fixings go into what the wall actually is. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The awkward corner goes in first, not last.

Every flight adds a set of handling movements, and handling is where stone gets damaged, so a fourth-floor walk-up is priced by the flight rather than by the metre. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Boards go down wherever a loaded trolley has to run. A resident bay and a shared-use bay can sit on the same street under different rules, and it is usually the shared one a visitor permit or a ticket touches. 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 sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. An annexe kitchen is often built to keep a parent independent, so worktop height and reach matter as much as the material does. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house. A family adding a self-contained unit is paying for the whole conversion, and the worktop is one line in a much longer job. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. 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. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The managing agent books the lift, not the household.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Sintered stone at 12mm changes what a staircase can take, because the same run arrives at roughly half the weight of the granite equivalent. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it.

Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of it. It sets the crew: two fitters where the route is straightforward, four where it is not. The opening is measured on the diagonal, not across the frame.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The last piece in has the least tolerance left.