Worktop installation in Mill Hill

Yes. Mill Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW7. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. 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. The day is built around that window. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A range or an Aga in an original recess is usually immovable, so the run is designed around it and the clearances come from the appliance. Getting in is straightforward, so the day is spent dry-laying and scribing to walls that have never been straight. The slow parts are slow for a reason. Steep, narrow lanes around the village mean the material is better delivered on a smaller vehicle in two trips than on one big load that cannot turn.

The Ridgeway and the village lanes are narrow with sharp gradients and few passing places, so a large vehicle is a liability; the modern estates below have wide roads and long driveways with easy loading. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop design & quotation. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. 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 the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Sealed before we leave. 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. One visit, done properly.

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. Dry-lay first, always. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Eased in, never forced. 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. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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. Protection goes down first.