Worktop installation in Wallend

Yes. Wallend is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E6. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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 carry length sets the number of hands on the job. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A serving hatch through to the dining room was standard, and where it has been blocked up the patch sits on a different plane to the wall either side of it. 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 house sets the order of work. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The awkward corner goes in first, not last.

The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Boards go down wherever a loaded trolley has to run. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Book us when the units exist, not when they are ordered. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Handover day is a hard stop.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The last piece in has the least tolerance left. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The extension slab was poured to its own level, so there is a lip or a ramp where the new floor meets the original one. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Old plaster gets scribed to, never fought with.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

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. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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.

Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Access is checked against the longest piece first.