Worktop installation in Hounslow Heath

Yes. Hounslow Heath is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW4. 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.

Deck access means a long open walkway from the lift or the stair to the front door, and that walk happens with the piece on edge in whatever weather there is. The carry is the constraint. That is the shape of the day. These kitchens are almost never square and the walls are dense concrete, so expect to scribe both ends and drill rather than chase for an upstand.

Estate roads with parking courts, bollards and tight turning heads, and some blocks are walk-up with access along an external deck. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. None of it is worked out on the doorstep. 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. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. One visit, done properly. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The prep list is not optional.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. One visit, our own installers.