Worktop installation in Kingsbury

Yes. Kingsbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW9. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen is usually a rear room extended into the garden, with the original external wall now standing inside the run. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. That is the shape of the day. 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.

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. 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. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. That is what the morning is planned around.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop design & quotation and worktop fabrication. 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. One visit, done properly. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Sealed before we leave.

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. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Dry-lay first, always. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door, communal or otherwise. Access for the whole slot, or a different day.