Kitchen worktops in Colindale

Yes. One of the densest concentrations of new apartments in London, where kitchens are open-plan single walls or L-shapes of 2.7m to 3.4m with an integrated hob, oven and full-height fridge already in place. Nearly all the work is replacing developer laminate with stone inside a kitchen nobody wants to reconfigure, plus a matching upstand and window sill. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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. A suspension for the full day beats half a day lost.

2010s-2020s high-rise apartment, regeneration low-rise and 1930s semi at the edges. Concrete panel walls bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and the back edge is cut to follow it. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

Towers with booked goods lifts, concierge sign-in, insurance documentation and time-limited loading bays, and underground car parks with height barriers that stop a standard stone van. Lift internal dimensions decide the maximum piece. Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. 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. A polished face close to an edge does not survive a knock.

Worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Grout lines are the first thing to fail in a let. Measure the goods lift and the flat's front door before quoting, because on these blocks the building, not the kitchen, sets the largest piece you can deliver.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The new pieces are nested, not traced off the old ones. 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. 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. Full height wants a flat wall behind it. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Two budgets, settled before anything is cut. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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. Each obstruction is another joint, and it is priced as one.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Kitchens are compact and standardised, which makes the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines a larger share of the total than the stone. Plaster bonded straight onto concrete comes away with the bottom course of tiles, leaving a band behind the upstand. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The carry is the constraint: a single stair with tight half-landings, or deck access with a long walk from the lift. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The wall behind the old top is rarely the wall on the drawing.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The sink is chosen before the cut list is set.