Worktop installation in South Hampstead

Yes. South Hampstead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW6, NW3. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Camera enforcement gives nobody the chance to explain, where an officer on foot at least sees a tail lift down and stone coming off it. 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. Time lost at the kerb never comes back later in the day. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A deep butler sink and a boiling tap on the same length put two heavy cut-outs within a metre of each other. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. What the building will take decides how it is fixed. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut.

Carrying down a flight is not the easier direction, because the weight runs ahead of the crew and whoever is at the bottom has no way of stopping a slip. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Suction pads go on once the face is clean and dry, not before. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. 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. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days.

It is one of the three that come up most, though worktop replacement comes up more. Nothing changes between them: same template, same workshop, same installers. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The last trade in inherits every delay before it. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn.

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. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A corner that will not close is never forced. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up. Give us the hardest, shortest approach to the door you can, clear of parked cars, and warn us of any soft ground, steps or gravel on the route. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The room cleared before the crew arrives.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A forced back edge cracks weeks later.

Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Ceilings are high enough that an extractor over the island has a long drop, and its position is fixed before the island top is templated. Getting in is straightforward, so the day is spent dry-laying and scribing to walls that have never been straight. The age of the house sets the pace of it.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Pieces are carried in the order they are laid.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. These kitchens carry two ovens, a wine cabinet and a boiling tap, so the cut-out count runs well ahead of what the length of the runs suggests. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. One visit, our own installers.