Kitchen worktops in Temple Fortune

Yes. Flats above the distinctive shopping parades have small, awkwardly shaped kitchens set into the roof and gable spaces with sloping ceilings that rule out wall units above part of the run. The surrounding houses are comfortable interwar semis where the kitchen is knocked through to the dining room for a 3.6m run and a peninsula. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Two loads, one space, one day.

Arts and Crafts style parade with flats above, 1920s-30s semi and purpose-built mansion block. Rear windows are wide and low with a deep tiled cill, and that cill decides how tall the upstand behind the sink can be. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. Whatever the shell has done since is dealt with now.

Flats over the parades are reached by narrow shared stairs from the rear yards, with no lift and a turn at each landing; Finchley Road frontage has loading restrictions and constant bus traffic. A short run of external steps before the communal door means a piece is lifted twice before the staircase proper has even started. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Protection goes down along it first.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A tenant moves in on the date on the contract. Sloping ceilings over part of the run mean the slab cannot be tilted upright at that end, so it has to enter the room already close to horizontal.

A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The new pieces are nested, not traced off the old ones. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Sealant seals. It does not fit. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The room cleared before the crew arrives. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The awkward metre takes the longest.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The sink is chosen before the cut list is set.

If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. That family has lived on a building site long enough.