Worktop installation in Highbury

Yes. Highbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N5. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. 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. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The addition is a brick narrower than the house it hangs off, which leaves a stub of the original rear wall standing square to the run at the doorway end. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads.

A short run of external steps before the communal door means a piece is lifted twice before the staircase proper has even started. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. 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. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop replacement ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The prep list is not optional.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Pieces are carried in the order they are laid. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. Emptying the room belongs to the keyholder, not the crew.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. 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. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. The lean-to roof drains into a valley gutter against the addition next door, and a long leak there shows at the head of the kitchen wall rather than on the ceiling. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. Fixings go into what the wall actually is.

The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The return is offered up last.