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. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

Arts and Crafts style parade with flats above, 1920s-30s semi and purpose-built mansion block. The chimney breast in the corner has usually been left in place, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends. 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. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

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. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, 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. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. 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. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. 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. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. 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.

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. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Units kept, surface changed. 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.