Worktop installation in New Southgate

Yes. New Southgate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N11. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. 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. An early slot is the cheapest parking arrangement there is. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A two-up two-down has a kitchen that was never designed to be one, so the run is short, the ceiling is low and every millimetre of depth gets argued over. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The slow parts are slow for a reason. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Offered up twice, bonded once.

Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. A crew waiting for a space is a crew being paid to wait.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A missing sink stops eight kitchens, not one.

An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Scribed one piece at a time. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Sealant seals. It does not fit. 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. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. One visit where permission only stretches to one.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. One datum for every run in the room.

Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Nobody sets a worktop down mid-flight to change grip.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. The carry length sets the number of hands on the job.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Protection comes up only when the last piece is inside.