Kitchen worktops in Oakwood

Yes. Deep rear gardens backing onto the Trent Park side means big single-storey rear extensions with a glazed roof, so the kitchen becomes a proper open-plan room with a 3m-plus island facing the garden and the working run pushed back against the old rear wall. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. 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. Van to door is the distance that matters.

1930s semi, 1930s detached and 1960s bungalow. There is a chimney breast on each flank wall, and the one in the kitchen carried a boiler flue rather than a fireplace, so the recess beside it is shallow. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. Levelled first, then set, then sealed.

Good - most houses have a driveway and the roads are wide, but the extensions themselves are often already built with the doors on, so the slab route is through the house rather than in from the garden. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The way in is walked with a tape before the van is opened.

Worktop installation, in that order. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Handover day is a hard stop. Where the extension has a large rooflight, the island reads far brighter than a showroom does - judge a dark colour on site rather than under showroom light.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A day out of use, told to whoever lives there. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Internal walls are hollow clay block or stud rather than solid brick, so two points a metre apart on the same wall want two different fixings. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Nothing is cut in the room if the shop could do it.

Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. The original floor is timber over a deep ventilated void with air bricks right round the perimeter, and the extension slab butts straight up against it. A run crossing from the original room into the extension is packed to one plane before the stone is offered up. Carried once, and carried properly.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Where the van stands sets how the day runs.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together.