Kitchen worktops in Friern Barnet

Yes. Ordinary terraces and semis with rear kitchens, plus a distinctive body of apartments converted from the old asylum buildings where kitchens sit inside listed shells with huge ceiling heights, deep reveals and windows that cannot be touched. Those conversions need runs planned around fixed structure rather than around cabinetry. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. Where the van must move, the waste goes on first.

Victorian and Edwardian terrace, 1930s semi and gated conversion of the former hospital. Rear rooms of this date have a wide sash or a pair of garden doors, so a good deal of the wall the run wants is glass. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone.

The gated conversion estate has security barriers, a one-way internal road and controlled parking, so deliveries must be pre-registered; the surrounding streets are ordinary permit-controlled suburbia with some driveways. A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Protection goes down along it first.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The last trade in inherits every delay before it. In the listed conversions the walls are solid and thick with deep window reveals, so returns into the reveal have to be templated individually and cannot be assumed square.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The new pieces are nested, not traced off the old ones. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access confirmed rather than assumed. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The side return was an outside toilet and a coal store before it was ever a kitchen, and the walls left over from that are half a brick thick. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Water damage under a sink is the usual find.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Internal walls are lath on timber studs while the flank walls are brick, so two walls in the same kitchen take a fixing completely differently. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. The floor has dropped since the kitchen went in.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all.

Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Party wall settlement pulls the floor down at one side of the room, so a long run reads level at one end and not at the other. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. Cutting the old top out saves the units below it.