Kitchen worktops in Alperton

Yes. Two entirely different jobs in one district: interwar semis with a rear kitchen and a lean-to being replaced by a proper extension, and canal-side apartment blocks with compact open-plan kitchen-living rooms where the worktop doubles as the only dining surface. In the flats the peninsula end usually needs a 300mm to 400mm overhang for stools, which means brackets or a thicker deck. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. 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. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day.

1930s semi, canal-side 2010s-2020s tower and post-war maisonette. Kitchens are compact and standardised, which makes the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines a larger share of the total than the stone. The carry is the constraint. Levelled first, then set, then sealed.

The houses have driveways and easy kerbside loading; the towers along the canal have controlled underground parking with height barriers that a Luton or a tail-lift van will not clear, so the drop-off point needs confirming before the slab is loaded. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. The room is cleared for the way out as much as the way in.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week. Height restrictors on the apartment car parks are the recurring problem here, and the fix is a smaller vehicle plus a longer walk rather than a bigger crew.

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. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. It was there long before we were. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Somebody has to own the skip. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Entry-phone access, a booked lift and a parking bay near the entrance all have to be arranged before a date is confirmed. Deck access or a single narrow staircase with tight half-landings means long pieces get walked up on edge, and the landing turn is checked before we commit. Carried once, and carried properly.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands.

Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Dense concrete and blockwork mean the wall cannot be chased back or packed out, so the stone carries the scribe. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The first hour is protection and packing, not stone.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. 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 last piece in has the least tolerance left.