Kitchen worktops in Finsbury Park

Yes. Dominated by terraces converted into two or three flats, so the typical job is a small kitchen in a rear addition or a former bedroom at 2.4-3m, with a wall-hung boiler sitting directly over the run. Ground-floor and garden flats get a little more room and occasionally a short peninsula. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Off the van last, and never in a hurry.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, conversion flat and post-war block. Boxed sash frames swallow a hundred millimetres of wall on each side of the opening, so the wall between a window and a corner is shorter than a plan makes it look. 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. Same units, straighter line, better surface.

Seven Sisters Road and Stroud Green Road are busy with bus lanes and loading restrictions, and the residential streets are permit-only with very high occupancy. Shared entrances, bikes in the hall and stairs to the first or second floor are standard on nearly every job. Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying it. 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. Two carries in one day needs the route free for both.

Worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation, in that order. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. A spare panel is cheaper now than next year. With a boiler and its pipework over the run you get cut-outs and a reduced clear splashback height, so measure to the boiler casing rather than to the wall units.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Any overhang gets underpinned first. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Mark it, lift it, cut it, offer it up again. Supply-only material opens at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line rather than as a single number.

One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Heights that have to match are cut to match. Say what the building is at the booking stage and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice become part of the plan rather than a surprise.

Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A communal flight is out of use while a piece is on it, so the carry is timed so nobody is trying to pass on a half-landing. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. Waste goes out the way the stone came in, so the route stays clear.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. A fitted stair carpet is either lifted or covered, because grit trodden into it under work boots does more harm than the carry itself. The old tops leave by the same route, so the carry out and the skip or van are planned alongside the carry in. Disconnection happens before the old top is lifted, not during.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The shape is measured again, not copied off the old top.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Laminate hides what the gables are really doing.