Kitchen worktops in East Barnet

Yes. Interwar suburbia around the village, where the standard job is a rear extension with bifolds giving an open kitchen-diner, a 4m run under a roof light and an island of about 2.4m. Utilities are usually squeezed into a side return or the old kitchen doorway rather than being purpose-built. 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. 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.

1930s semi, 1930s detached and post-war maisonette. A side door into a lobby with a cloakroom off it is the standard arrangement, so there is a second way in that misses the hall altogether. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. Settlement is packed out, never levered out.

Wide residential roads with dropped kerbs and drives, decent side gates, and the valley of the brook meaning some roads dip steeply; the village centre itself has short-stay parking only. Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Nobody sets a worktop down mid-flight to change grip.

Worktop installation, in that order. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A slipped slot takes the next one with it. New extensions here are often templated too early, before the floor screed has been laid, and the resulting unit height change is the commonest cause of a remake.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. 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. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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 about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Ceilings are lath and plaster at the front and plasterboard in the extension, and the join between the two marks where the original back wall stood. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The awkward piece goes in before the easy ones.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The incoming main and the stopcock come up through the floor at the old scullery wall, so whatever unit stands over them has to stay removable. A run crossing from the original room into the extension is packed to one plane before the stone is offered up. A dry-lined wall hides a void, and the void gets bridged.

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. 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. 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. 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. The parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. The rear wall now carries french or folding doors across most of its width, so a whole side of the room opens and a long piece comes straight in off the garden. The side route is boarded where it crosses a soft path or a border, and the gate is measured rather than assumed. Movement joints in the shell stay movement joints.