Worktop installation in Monken Hadley

Yes. Monken Hadley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN5. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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 carry length sets the number of hands on the job. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The staircase rises over the back room in a good number of these, so a sloping bulkhead sits over one end of the run and a piece cannot be stood on edge beneath it. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted. 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. The awkward metre takes the longest.

A hall radiator or a coat hook at shoulder height takes a hundred millimetres off the usable width, and a hundred millimetres is often the entire margin. 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. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Back-to-back slots need every flat ready on the first day. 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. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. 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 laying order follows the shape. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Owner or agent, somebody has to be reachable.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up.

If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. 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. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. The prep list is not optional.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Scribed one piece at a time.

The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. The opening is measured on the diagonal, not across the frame.