Worktop installation in Harrow Garden Village

Yes. Harrow Garden Village is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA2, HA5. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

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. Levelled first, then set, then sealed. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all.

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. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The way in is agreed before the crew is booked, not after. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence.

Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Keys confirmed the week before, not the morning of.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. We would sooner lift a gate off its hinges than force a piece past it.

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. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. 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. Support goes in before stone does, so whatever steel, plywood or extra noggin the shape calls for is fitted while the room is still empty. The last piece in has the least tolerance left.