Kitchen worktops in Kingsbury

Yes. Deep interwar plots mean rear extensions are the norm here, and the resulting kitchens are big open-plan rooms with a 4m run along the flank wall and an island of 2.4m to 3m with a hob and downdraught. Households often want two ovens and a large sink with a separate prep bowl, so cut-outs eat more of the slab than in the smaller stock nearby. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The strapping answers to the walk, not the drive.

1930s Metroland semi, 1930s Art Deco moderne house and 1960s purpose-built flat. The kitchen is usually a rear room extended into the garden, with the original external wall now standing inside the run. Most of these have a side passage and a back door, so a full-length piece can usually reach the kitchen without being cut down, and the piece sizing is driven by the slab rather than the route. The template carries the building into the workshop.

Wide roads, front driveways and long side alleys are the norm, so slabs commonly go straight down the side of the house into the extension without touching the interior. Watch for new side extensions that have swallowed the alley and reduced it to a locked door. 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 crew size follows from it.

Worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The last trade in inherits every delay before it. Big islands here are heavy enough to need the floor checked first, because a 3m island on a screed over a new extension slab will show any dip once the stone is bedded.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Book-matched pieces are cut adjacent or not at all. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. 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. A cleared crew arrives with its paperwork done. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. No money is taken before the template happens. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The boiler has usually been moved into the kitchen at some point, with its flue through the outer leaf and its pipework surface run to the nearest corner. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. A short piece is cut short on purpose.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. Stacking order is a parking decision here.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Houses of this period came with generous garages and utility rooms, so a second short run of stone is often part of the same job. What does drive the bench work is the knocked-through kitchen-diner: the return worktop and any peninsula are seen end-on from the dining side, so we nest the pieces so the veining carries across the internal corner in the same direction rather than turning through ninety degrees. A wall that leans is machined to the lean.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Crittall windows were swapped for plastic ones in openings that were made good rather than rebuilt, which leaves reveals that are neither straight nor equal. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. Nothing is machined until the drawing matches the building.