Worktop installation in Oakleigh Park

Yes. Oakleigh Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N20. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up.

A carpeted hall runs a trolley badly, so a heavy piece is carried rather than rolled from the threshold in. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The opening is measured on the diagonal, not across the frame. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The day is built around that window.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The prep list is not optional. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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.

A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. One datum for every run in the room. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A forced back edge cracks weeks later. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. 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 full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The island is set against the perimeter, not a wall.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. A bay-fronted terrace has a long hall running past the stairs to the kitchen, so the hall turn caps the piece length before the run length does. Pieces are stood on edge for the turns and carried flat for the straights, and that sequence is agreed before anything comes off the van. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. No payment is due before the template. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The kitchen normally sits in the back addition or a later side return, which puts the run against the oldest and least straight wall in the building. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Suction pads will not hold on a wet or dusty face.

What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. The rear wall is usually a single brick thick and has been rendered, patched and re-rendered, so it bows in and out along the length of the run. The units are levelled and packed before a top goes near them, because a settled floor shows immediately in a long straight edge. Settlement is packed out, never levered out.