Kitchen worktops in Hadley Wood

Yes. Very large houses on private roads where the kitchen is one part of a suite that includes a back kitchen, a pantry and a utility, all fitted to the same standard. Islands run past 3.5m, waterfall ends and matching stone splashbacks are expected, and material is frequently reserved from a specific block rather than chosen from a sample. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load plan follows from it.

large Edwardian and interwar detached, modern replacement mansion and gated private roads. Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. Access is off a drive and through wide doors, so for once the piece size is not the constraint - the joins that go in are the ones we choose for layout and veining, not the ones the building forces. What the shell demands is solved in the shop, not the kitchen.

Private estate roads with gates and a narrow railway bridge on the main approach that limits vehicle height and length, so the delivery vehicle has to be chosen for the route. Driveways are long, gravelled and often sloped. Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The void ends whether we have finished or not. The railway bridge and gate widths on the approach roads decide which van can get in, and that needs checking at survey rather than on delivery day.

It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Cut-outs are machined with the piece bedded down. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. Supply-only material opens at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line rather than as a single number.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. 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. The signature at the end belongs to somebody with authority. Say what the building is at the booking stage and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice become part of the plan rather than a surprise.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Nothing is payable in advance of the template. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. Original solid floors are quarry tile or flagstone bedded on ash, and they have moved with the ground rather than with the building. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Drainer grooves are machined flat, on a bed, never on site.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Apron mitres are bonded and polished before dispatch.