Worktop installation in Brent Cross

Yes. Brent Cross is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW4, NW2. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. 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. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Original quarry-tiled floors sit lower than a later screed, so a run crossing that junction needs the units packed to one level. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. Carried once, and carried properly. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Mark it, lift it, cut it, offer it up again.

Handrails, mirrors and a sloping ceiling panel all eat into the usable diagonal, and none of them appear on a lift specification sheet. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Four hands or eight is settled before the tail lift drops. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The van does not stay on a main road once it is empty.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop replacement. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The building keeps working around us. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A slipped slot takes the next one with it.

A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Waterfall legs are set before the top is bonded down. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted 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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The managing agent books the lift, not the household.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. 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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. 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 step between rooms is packed out first.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. The kitchen sits at the rear with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the useful run is broken into two short lengths. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. Old floors get packed, not argued with.

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. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. 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. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it.