Worktops in Belmont

Yes. Belmont is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA3. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. Whatever the standing allows, the stone leaves that van finished, because every edge, cut-out and internal radius is machined at the works and none of it is open to reconsideration at the kerb. The last hour on a granite kitchen belongs to the sealer. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Where the dividing wall has come out there is a steel over the opening and a nib of the old wall left at each end, and a run turning that corner has to clear both nibs. These kitchens are usually knocked through to the dining room, so the surface is read from two sides at once and the figure has to carry across the pieces rather than restart at every join. Hard-working kitchens suit surfaces that ask for nothing. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. Every notch and every scribe is machined into the piece before it leaves the works, and a hard sintered surface is the least forgiving of a tight internal corner, so one is always cut with a generous radius. Thirty millimetres bridges a gap that twenty millimetres will not.

A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. That caps the longest piece, and a run split into two lengths nests differently on the slab, which moves the yield and moves the figure with it. The pieces either side of a break come off adjoining slab. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. A granite kitchen ends its day with a sealer, and a sealer wants a dry face and a quiet hour afterwards, so that hour is written into the day rather than borrowed from it. What stands on the van is finished stone, not raw slab.

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 installation. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Where several kitchens are ordered together the sensible move is to take them all off one batch, because two slabs of the same name bought six months apart will not sit happily in the same building. The island is usually what turns one slab into two. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Volume work tends to live at the entry end of the range, and the entry end is genuine stone rather than a compromise, since the lowest supply figure we quote is a sintered surface and not a thin laminate pretending to be one. Where tenants change often, a surface with nothing to seal wins.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. A shape like that nests kindly on a slab, so more of what gets bought ends up on the units and the rate per square metre behaves much as the brochure says it will. Finished ends cost by the metre, however short the run is. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. A hob dropped into the middle of a length puts sustained warmth at the lip of a cut-out, and an engineered surface will yellow there across ten years where a natural one takes it without comment. A cranked piece eats more slab than the two straights it replaces. Confirm the depth of the units, the total run lengths and whether an island or peninsula is going in, and tell us the colour temperature of the lighting. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. That changes which questions are worth asking about the stone, because somebody staying put wants to know how a honed face marks in five years and somebody selling wants to know how it photographs next spring. A surface chosen for a photograph rarely survives the cooking.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. A run that sits under strong sun for hours every afternoon suits a surface built to be stable in daylight, because a resin-bound stone is made for indoor use and sustained sunlight is the one thing it was never designed around. Short lengths are where a full slab starts to pay for itself.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. The windows were steel to begin with and have been swapped for plastic in openings lined out to suit, so the reveal is now deeper than the brickwork behind it. Side light from the garden is what lets a stone with movement in it actually be seen, which is why a busier granite or a veined quartz earns its keep here and a flat single colour rarely does. Even light lets a mid-tone hold its own.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The old larder leaves behind a thick cold shelf and a vent brick through the outer wall, and both have to go before that wall reads flat. Which stone belongs on top of all that is a separate question from the building itself, and it is the one with a figure attached, because supply alone runs from £110 to £550 per square metre before a single cut has been made. A slab has a direction, and the room decides which way it runs.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. An island is the piece that decides whether one slab covers the kitchen or two, and a second slab arrives as a step in the figure rather than a gentle slope. Cut-outs take material out of the piece that carries the sink.