Kitchen worktops in Kenton

Yes. Dense interwar suburbia with large households, and a strong local pattern of double-fronted rear extensions producing very long kitchen runs of 4m to 5m plus an island, often with two sinks and a dedicated vegetable prep area. Second cooking spaces in a converted garage or outhouse are frequent. 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 first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

1930s semi, 1930s terrace and 1960s purpose-built flat. Deep timber window boards were fitted throughout and they stand proud of the plaster, so a top reaching the window meets a stepped edge rather than a flat one. 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. What the building will take decides how it is fixed.

Wide straight roads, drives on most houses and reliable side access down 900mm alleys, so slabs commonly go straight to the rear. Kenton Road itself is a busy through route where kerbside stopping is awkward at peak times. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Handling points are marked on the crate before it is strapped.

Worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. A family adding a self-contained unit is paying for the whole conversion, and the worktop is one line in a much longer job. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Short runs waste more slab than long ones do. Runs over 4m mean planning the joint around the hob and the sink so the seam falls where it will not sit in standing water.

A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Packing goes under the units, not under the stone. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. The radius goes in at the bench, not on site. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Dry-assembled before it leaves. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. A deep relief needs material left behind it.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Clamps close the joint, colour match settles it.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. 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. Waterfall legs are set before the top is bonded down.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. The hall is parquet or original boards in a good many of these, and it is the surface that takes the traffic for the whole of a fitting day. A run crossing from the original room into the extension is packed to one plane before the stone is offered up. The age of the house sets the pace of it.