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. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. It is one line among the others, and it is honest.

1930s semi, interwar detached, Edwardian house near the lane and postwar infill. Houses of this period came with generous garages and utility rooms, so a second short run of stone is often part of the same job. 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. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

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. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Same slab run, or it is not a match. 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. Dry-lay first, always. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. The drawing decides it, not the fitter. 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.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Dry-assembled before it leaves. 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.