Kitchen worktops in Fortune Green

Yes. More whole houses than the streets nearer the station, so kitchens sit at the rear of the ground floor and are often already extended into a small rear infill giving an L of about 3.5m plus a return. Islands only appear where two rooms have been knocked together, otherwise a peninsula against the old chimney breast. 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. 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. A spotter on the van is a man off the tools.

Edwardian terrace, 1930s semi, purpose-built block and post-war infill. The house is designed to the width it was allowed, so the kitchen is long and narrow and the run has no real choice about where it goes. If the diagonal is short we either split the run with a planned join or, on lower floors, carry up the stairwell, which needs the half-landing turn checking as well. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.

Quiet residential streets with permit parking and better van access than most of NW6, though the climb up from Fortune Green Road is a real factor on the carry. Front doors open into a porch and then a hall with a right turn at the stairs, which is the pinch point on almost every house. A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. 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. The van stands for both movements, not just the delivery.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. One plot replaced years on, matched or otherwise. Edwardian rear walls here are usually rendered and bowed, so expect to scribe the back edge and pack the units before setting anything down.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The island is set against the perimeter, not a wall. 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. The stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

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. 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. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not.

The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Every internal doorway on the way through is another frame to clear, and internal doors come off their hinges rather than being propped open. 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. A laminate run comes out easier than stone goes in.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Rooflights over the rear bring light straight down onto the worktop, which shows a polished finish and any step at a join. The lift is measured before the piece is loaded, and once inside the flat the fitting is quick by comparison. Fixings go into what the wall actually is.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it.