Kitchen worktops in Ealing Common

Yes. Big villas with the kitchen in the lower ground or rear return, usually extended full width onto the garden. Generous islands, a butler's pantry run and a taste for heavily veined marble-look quartz. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Large Victorian villa, Edwardian villa, 1930s mansion flat and conversion flat. These houses usually sit in their own grounds with a long approach, so the carry from van to door is longer than anything inside the building. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. The shell has the last word on fitting day.

Streets around the common are residents-only permit bays. Villas have deep front paths and a flight of steps up to a raised ground floor, and driveways are rare. Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved.

Worktop installation, 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Fire doors stay shut, so the carry route is longer. Those front steps mean every piece gets lifted over three or four risers, which is worth two extra hands rather than trying it with one.

A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink does. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The return is offered up last. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The awkward corner goes in first, not last. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Scheme rules on working hours are checked first. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Visitor permits are issued to the household rather than to the trade, so the ones the day needs come from the customer and are best in hand the week before. 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. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The room has three or four doors and a route through it to the garden, so the work shares the space with everyone else in the house. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Access, floor and wall in that order, then stone.

Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. The hall is cleared before the first piece comes off the trolley.