Kitchen worktops in Harringay

Yes. The Ladder streets are long, narrow terraces where the kitchen sits in a back addition and the classic upgrade is a side-return infill giving a 4m to 5m single run with the sink in the middle. Households along the Green Lanes end often want a second cooker or a large gas hob, which drives bigger cut-outs. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Victorian ladder terrace, Edwardian terrace and flat above shop. A long piece has to come through the front door, down the hall, round the newel post and through a doorway with a step down into the addition. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Fixings go into what the wall actually is.

The Ladder streets are one-car-wide with permit parking on both sides and no front gardens, so the van blocks the road while you unload. Green Lanes itself has loading bans and constant deliveries to the shops and restaurants. The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. Where it will not come out whole it comes out in sections.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, 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 units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Booked at short notice, because the notice is short. A 5m infill run needs at least one joint, and the joint has to land away from the hob and sink - agree the position with the client at template so it does not come as a surprise.

The wall between the original room and the return usually carries a steel, and the plaster line above it steps, so anything full height behind the run is measured separately from the top. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The island is set against the perimeter, not a wall. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Repeat flats take the same replacement specification. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. 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. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Cutting a top down indoors means emptying the room first.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. Pieces are stood on edge for the turns and carried flat for the straights, and that sequence is agreed before anything comes off the van. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A single long run down one side puts every cut-out in one piece, so the sink, the hob and any drainer grooves all take material out of the same length. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it.