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. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Access is a question about the plot rather than the house: a narrow frontage between older buildings with nowhere obvious to stand a van. 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 slow parts are slow for a reason. Edwardian rear walls here are usually rendered and bowed, so expect to scribe the back edge and pack the units before setting anything down.

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. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The prep list is not optional.

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. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Dry-lay first, always. 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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. It is the slow part of the day and it should be. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. One visit, our own installers.