Worktop installation in Mapesbury

Yes. Mapesbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW2, NW6. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. 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. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The kitchen is a rear service room with a scullery and a larder off it, and both have usually survived as separate spaces. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The awkward metre takes the longest.

Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Boards go down wherever a loaded trolley has to run. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop fabrication ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A missing sink stops eight kitchens, not one. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Back-to-back slots need every flat ready on the first day.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut. Give us the hardest, shortest approach to the door you can, clear of parked cars, and warn us of any soft ground, steps or gravel on the route. 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A rolling programme loses a flat to one missing key.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. There is usually a cellar head or a hatch somewhere in the floor, and whatever sits above it has to stay liftable. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. A settled floor adds an hour and the day allows for it.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. 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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. 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 join is the last thing finished.