Kitchen worktops in Pitshanger

Yes. 1930s semis with the kitchen alongside the garage, extended back into a family room. The usual upgrade is an island with breakfast seating plus a walk-in larder with its own shelving. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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. Where the van stands sets how the day runs.

1930s semi, interwar detached, Edwardian house near the lane and postwar infill. The rear wall now carries french or folding doors across most of its width, so a whole side of the room opens and a long piece comes straight in off the garden. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. Old floors get packed, not argued with.

The Pitshanger Lane parade has limited bays but the residential roads have drives. The golf course and the River Brent cut off through routes, so it is one way in and back out. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. It is settled on the bench, not on site.

Worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Ten metres of upstand out of what the tops left. Larder and pantry shelving in matching stone gets asked for here, so cut it from the offcut at the same template rather than reordering later.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The last piece in has the least tolerance left. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Left and right alcove pieces are marked and stay marked. 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 quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Appliance changes after nesting are a new piece. 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.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. A relief that deep changes how the piece is lifted.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. The original plan put a larder and a back door on the same wall, and both leave awkward stubs once the room is opened up. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Silicone finishes the job; it does not rescue it.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The room is wide enough that an island turns up in nearly every scheme, and how far the drainage can be taken is what fixes where it sits. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Once the cut-outs are machined there is no going back on it.