Kitchen worktops in Childs Hill

Yes. Older, smaller terraces than the rest of NW11, heavily converted into flats, so a large share of kitchens are 2.4m single runs fitted into former bedrooms or rear rooms with the boiler and the stack in the corner. Whole houses that survive intact usually take a modest rear extension rather than a full side return infill because the plots are narrow. Where the household has used up the visitor permits it gets for the year, the remaining options are a suspension or a paid bay and both belong on the quote. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Nothing goes out until the route back to the van is clear.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, converted flats and small post-war block. The flat below hears the floor more than the walls, so lifting boards to move a waste run is a conversation with a neighbour before it is a morning of work. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.

The ground falls steeply towards the Finchley Road and Cricklewood, so streets are on a gradient with stepped front entrances and no driveways, and permit parking is enforced. Converted flats mean a stair carry on most jobs. Every flight adds a set of handling movements, and handling is where stone gets damaged, so a fourth-floor walk-up is priced by the flight rather than by the metre. Splashback panels are lighter than a worktop and far more awkward, because a tall thin piece has to be carried on edge and cannot be tilted to clear a turn. They come in last so nothing is carried past them.

Worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Cut with the tops while the batch is open. Steep streets plus stepped front paths make the approach the hardest part, and a slab that fits the kitchen may still not turn at the top of a Victorian staircase.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The strip-out is the part worth planning. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. It is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. Upstands sit tight because both edges are cut. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. A second visit needs a second permission. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. A thinner top drops the run against the tiles.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Electrics went in at conversion, some in surface trunking and some chased into lath and plaster, so no cable route in these rooms is safe to assume. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The old top hid it; the new one will not.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. A tall panel that fits at the worktop will stand off the wall at the top unless the wall is dubbed out or the panel is scribed. A breast return is scribed on three edges.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The combination boiler hangs on whichever wall happened to be external, and that decision has already used up a stretch of the only wall the run wanted. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. Same units, straighter line, better surface.