Worktops 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 drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. Whatever the standing allows, the stone leaves that van finished, because every edge, cut-out and internal radius is machined at the works and none of it is open to reconsideration at the kerb. Nothing is ever colour matched outdoors under a grey sky. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Internal walls are lath and plaster on studs with heavy framing behind, so a fixing finds either nothing at all or something very solid. There is usually an island, and the island takes the liveliest part of the stone while the perimeter is allowed to stay quiet, which is a decision made at the slab rather than on paper. A kitchen with no window of its own needs tone rather than colour. 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. Every notch and every scribe is machined into the piece before it leaves the works, and a hard sintered surface is the least forgiving of a tight internal corner, so one is always cut with a generous radius. An engineered surface yellows under standing warmth; natural stone does not.

The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. That caps the longest piece, and a run split into two lengths nests differently on the slab, which moves the yield and moves the figure with it. The pieces either side of a break come off adjoining slab. 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. A granite kitchen ends its day with a sealer, and a sealer wants a dry face and a quiet hour afterwards, so that hour is written into the day rather than borrowed from it. The film stays on the face until the last trade leaves.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. 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. Where several kitchens are ordered together the sensible move is to take them all off one batch, because two slabs of the same name bought six months apart will not sit happily in the same building. Two slabs bought a season apart are two different stones. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Volume work tends to live at the entry end of the range, and the entry end is genuine stone rather than a compromise, since the lowest supply figure we quote is a sintered surface and not a thin laminate pretending to be one. Buying for hard use is a different exercise from buying for looks.

Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. A shape like that nests kindly on a slab, so more of what gets bought ends up on the units and the rate per square metre behaves much as the brochure says it will. Finished ends cost by the metre, however short the run is. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. A hob dropped into the middle of a length puts sustained warmth at the lip of a cut-out, and an engineered surface will yellow there across ten years where a natural one takes it without comment. Strong daylight is an argument for a surface built to take it. Send the island dimensions and the perimeter run lengths, say whether a waterfall end is wanted, and tell us which slab you would like reserved. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. That changes which questions are worth asking about the stone, because somebody staying put wants to know how a honed face marks in five years and somebody selling wants to know how it photographs next spring. A week under your own lights is how a colour declares itself.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The room has three or four doors and a route through it to the garden, so the work shares the space with everyone else in the house. Which stone belongs on top of all that is a separate question from the building itself, and it is the one with a figure attached, because supply alone runs from £110 to £550 per square metre before a single cut has been made. Priced by the square metre, lived with by the square inch.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Floors are boards over joists with a solid floor only in the service rooms, and the two meet somewhere in the middle of the kitchen. Kitchens of this size nearly always run to two slabs, and once a second slab is in the quotation the question changes from price per square metre to which slab you actually want. Plain stone takes the seam that a long carry forces.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. Where a seam becomes unavoidable the choice of stone starts to matter, because a fine even speckle closes a joint almost invisibly and a broad vein simply will not. Weight per square metre belongs to the material, not to the length.

It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. Daylight arrives from more than one direction, which means a colour can be judged fairly here and a stone with real movement holds up instead of disappearing. Hard-working kitchens suit surfaces that ask for nothing.