Worktop installation in Woolwich

Yes. Woolwich is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE18. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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 first hand off the van is the one holding the clock. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The original larder or store cupboard usually survives in a corner, and that alcove is deeper than the units and squarer than the walls around it. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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.

Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence.

A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Nothing bears on plasterboard. 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. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. 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. A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The join is the last thing finished.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Standing a three-metre length on end takes more headroom outside the car than inside it, and a low lobby ceiling is what actually stops it. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The way in is walked with a tape before the van is opened.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Rear rooms of this date have a wide sash or a pair of garden doors, so a good deal of the wall the run wants is glass. Pieces are stood on edge for the turns and carried flat for the straights, and that sequence is agreed before anything comes off the van. Fixings go into what the wall actually is.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. Support goes in before stone does, so whatever steel, plywood or extra noggin the shape calls for is fitted while the room is still empty. Support first, stone second.