Worktop installation in Wennington

Yes. Wennington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM13. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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. Time lost at the kerb never comes back later in the day. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These have been added to over two centuries, so the kitchen is made of two or three walls of different ages and different thicknesses. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. Carried once, and carried properly. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop fabrication first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. 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. Handover day is a hard stop. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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. Give us the hardest, shortest approach to the door you can, clear of parked cars, and warn us of any soft ground, steps or gravel on the route. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. 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.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The room has three or four doors and a route through it to the garden, so the work shares the space with everyone else in the house. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Older buildings get the extra hour.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The opening is measured on the diagonal, not across the frame.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Original solid floors are quarry tile or flagstone bedded on ash, and they have moved with the ground rather than with the building. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Access, floor and wall in that order, then stone.

Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Windows are small and set deep, which leaves the run under them dark and the reveal too deep for a plain square end. Getting in is straightforward, so the day is spent dry-laying and scribing to walls that have never been straight. Old floors get packed, not argued with.