Worktop installation in Wood Lane

Yes. Wood Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W12. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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 booked bay only helps if it is empty when we arrive. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Windows are small and set to suit the elevation rather than the room, so most of the wall above the worktop is solid. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected. 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. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.

Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The crew size follows from it. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The clock on the bay runs whether the lift is free or not.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop replacement ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A tenant moves in on the date on the contract. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. That family has lived on a building site long enough.

Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Nothing bears on plasterboard. Book the service lift and loading bay with the building manager for the whole fitting window, and have the fob or key for lift override ready. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Scheme rules on working hours are checked first.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. The awkward corner goes in first, not last.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. 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.

The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Protection goes down along it first.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. 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. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there.