Worktop installation in Grange Park

Yes. Grange Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N21. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Enfield. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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 booked bay only helps if it is empty when we arrive. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A side return glazed over gives the room a second aspect and a second floor level, because the old external threshold is still under the finish. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. The house sets the order of work. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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.

Two people will walk a two-metre piece in through a front door; the same hall with a three-metre piece wants four, purely because nobody can let go halfway. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Four hands or eight is settled before the tail lift drops. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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. The clock on the bay runs whether the lift is free or not.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop fabrication. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Handover day is a hard stop.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The step between rooms is packed out first. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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 person is responsible for the door that morning.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Crittall windows were swapped for plastic ones in openings that were made good rather than rebuilt, which leaves reveals that are neither straight nor equal. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Dust extraction indoors, or the cut happens outside.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Suction pads go on once the face is clean and dry, not before.

A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. It sets the crew: two fitters where the route is straightforward, four where it is not. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it.