Worktop installation in Hadley Wood

Yes. Hadley Wood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN4. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. 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. The clock on the bay runs whether the lift is free or not. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

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. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. Levelled first, then set, then sealed. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing.

Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Protection comes up only when the last piece is inside. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

It is inside the three we do most here, under worktop fabrication. Either way: same template, same workshop, same fitters. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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. 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. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all. Give us the hardest, shortest approach to the door you can, clear of parked cars, and warn us of any soft ground, steps or gravel on the route. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Original solid floors are quarry tile or flagstone bedded on ash, and they have moved with the ground rather than with the building. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Nothing is cut in the room if the shop could do it.

If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. A curved bay or a canted corner turns up more often here than people expect, and a curve is templated and cut, never bent. Protection down, dry-lay, scribe, then bond: the order matters more in a difficult room than an easy one. The last piece down is the one nearest the door.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The way in is agreed before the crew is booked, not after.