Worktop installation in West Putney

Yes. West Putney is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW15. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. 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. We would rather ask than guess. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. 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. Movement joints in the shell stay movement joints. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded.

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. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it. Where the household has used up the visitor permits it gets for the year, the remaining options are a suspension or a paid bay and both belong on the quote. 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 kerb decides the start time.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A tenant moves in on the date on the contract.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The return is offered up last. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see. 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. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. 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.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Nothing changes hands until after the template. These are the multi-piece jobs, where vein direction across a join matters as much as the join itself. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Access, floor and wall in that order, then stone.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. A utility or boot room usually takes a second run of stone, templated with the kitchen and fitted after it. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The first hour is protection and packing, not stone.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Estate roads inside a controlled zone are sometimes managed privately rather than by the council, which changes who has to be asked. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Van to door is the distance that matters.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed.