Worktop installation in Temple Fortune

Yes. Temple Fortune is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW11. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. 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. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The outside walls are cavity and the party wall is solid brick, so fixings behave differently on the two long walls of the same room. 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. 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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set.

The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The hall is cleared before the first piece comes off the trolley. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. 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. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The last trade in inherits every delay before it. 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. 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 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. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. 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 fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A locked door costs the day, not an hour.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. There is no leaning a piece against a wall halfway up, so any flight longer than a dozen treads is planned around a rest point on a landing. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Boards go down wherever a loaded trolley has to run.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. 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. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. A serving hatch through to the dining room is common, and closing one up leaves a panel of newer wall exactly where the run passes. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The join is polished flat before we call it done.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads.