Worktop installation in Westcombe Park

Yes. Westcombe Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE3, SE10. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These were built late enough to have a damp course and proper footings, so the front of the house is close to true and the rear addition holding the kitchen is the part that has dropped. The day is planned backwards from the hall. What the building will take decides how it is fixed. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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 carpeted hall runs a trolley badly, so a heavy piece is carried rather than rolled from the threshold in. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The way in is agreed before the crew is booked, not after. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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 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. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house.

Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The whole slot, or the stone waits.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. 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 back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Nothing bears on plasterboard.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. The kitchen occupies the ground floor of the addition with a garden door at the far end, so there is a second way in that is narrower than the front door and a great deal shorter. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. The age of the house sets the pace of it.