Worktop installation in Brunswick Park

Yes. Brunswick Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N11. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The chimney breast served a back boiler and is usually still standing, so there is a shallow recess on one side of the room. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. Old floors get packed, not argued with. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The awkward metre takes the longest.

The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every re-grip is a chance to chip a piece, so they are planned out. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The building keeps working around us. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Support first, stone second. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Communal floors are protected the same as private ones.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The laying order follows the shape.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. A spotter on the van is a man off the tools.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Two runs and a return into a rear extension is the pattern, and the return is the piece that never nests neatly on a slab. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Silicone finishes the job; it does not rescue it.

Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up.