Kitchen worktops in Dollis Hill

Yes. Interwar semis stepping up the hill, with the original kitchen and larder at the back and a strong pattern of single-storey rear extensions built to catch the garden light. Typical finished kitchen is an L of roughly 3.6m plus 2m with a small breakfast peninsula, and the utility usually ends up in a converted garage or a lean-to. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

1920s-30s semi, 1930s terrace and post-war low-rise flat. The chimney breast in the corner has usually been left in place, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends. 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. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first.

Genuinely hilly streets around Gladstone Park with sloped driveways, so a barrow is worse than a straight carry and the van needs chocking. Dropped kerbs are common, which is the main advantage over the terraced areas below. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. Whether the strip-out is a cut-up job is settled at template.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. 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. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Shared-house tops take a decade of hard use. Sloped drives and steps up to the side gate make the walk-in the risk, not the kitchen, so two extra pairs of hands beat a clever route.

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. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Support first, stone second. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Notice goes out before the crew is booked. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. 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. These kitchens have been retiled at least twice, and stripping the tiles takes the bottom band of plaster with them because the old laminate ran underneath rather than up to them. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. The building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it.

If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. There is nothing to pay before the template visit. A shallow bay or a squared-off rear window means the run beneath it is rarely the same depth at both ends. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The awkward piece goes in before the easy ones.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. The original kitchen was a small rear room with a larder and a back door, and nearly all of them have since been opened into the dining room. A run crossing from the original room into the extension is packed to one plane before the stone is offered up. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. 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.