Kitchen worktops in Northwood Hills

Yes. 1930s semis with modest rear kitchens, side-return infills producing a 4m galley, and a high proportion of straightforward laminate-to-stone upgrades on existing units. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Access out counts as much as access in.

1930s semi, interwar terrace, parade flat and postwar infill. Infill plots usually put the kitchen at the back with wide doors to a small garden, and that opening is the best route in. The work is all in the building, not the kitchen. The fabric gets checked while it is open.

The Joel Street parade is busy with short-stay bays, but the residential streets have drives. The ground genuinely slopes here, which makes trolley work harder than the map suggests. 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. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Handover day is a hard stop. On these streets the van often cannot park level, so decide your lift-off point before you arrive with a loaded A-frame.

Bi-fold or sliding doors at the end of the return mean the run finishes against a frame rather than a wall, and a frame gives nothing to scribe into and no movement to take up. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Same shape, different cut list. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. One visit where permission only stretches to one. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. 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. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The way in is walked with a tape before the van is opened.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Riser panels, wall boxes and the boiler cupboard sit in fixed positions the developer will not move for a worktop. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Water damage under a sink is the usual find.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Nothing bears on plasterboard.