Worktop installation in Fortune Green

Yes. Fortune Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW6, NW2. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. 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. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Services were designed in rather than added later, so waste and feeds come up where the drawing put them and the sink is not moving. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. The shell has the last word on fitting day. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Banisters and door frames are padded before anything moves. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. 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. A spotter on the van is a man off the tools.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Book us when the units exist, not when they are ordered. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Handover day is a hard stop.

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. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set. Book the service lift and loading bay with the building manager for the whole fitting window, and have the fob or key for lift override ready. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. One visit where permission only stretches to one.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. No payment is due before the template. Riser panels, wall boxes and the boiler cupboard sit in fixed positions the developer will not move for a worktop. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Every unit gets a level on it before a piece lands.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it.

Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. A specification repeated across several plots has to be repeatable, which quietly rules out the natural stones where no two slabs match. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together.

A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. 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. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. A corner that will not close is never forced.