Worktop installation in Charville

Yes. Charville is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB4. It is run from the High Wycombe side, covering Buckinghamshire & Berkshire. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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 day is built around that window. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Walls are dense block or in-situ concrete with a bonded plaster, so the bottom course of tiles brings plaster with it when the old top comes off. The stairwell half-landing is usually the tightest point on the whole route and it dictates the maximum piece. That is the shape of the day. Original mid-century base units are 500mm deep, so a modern 600mm top overhangs badly and you either replace the carcasses or accept a large front oversail.

Wide estate roads with grass verges and paved hardstanding, no restrictions, and you can generally park directly outside the door. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The prep list is not optional. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The prep list is not optional.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. It is the slow part of the day and it should be. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Access for the whole slot, or a different day.