Worktop installation in Tufnell Park

Yes. Tufnell Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N7, NW5. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Listing and conservation conditions apply to a good number of these, which constrains what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what goes on top of the units. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun.

Suction lifters earn their keep on a straight flight and become a liability on a winder, where a handle standing out from the face is one more thing to catch on a wall. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Boards go down wherever a loaded trolley has to run. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The day is built around that window.

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. Handover day is a hard stop. 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. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits 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. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The managing agent books the lift, not the household.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Original quarry tile is often still down under two or three later floor coverings, which is why the finished floor height is rarely what anyone expects. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Door fronts and stone edges get checked against each other first.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. 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.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. A basement kitchen has a flagged or concrete floor laid straight onto the ground, so it is solid, cold and rarely within ten millimetres of level. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. Where the wall bellies, the top is eased in against it.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. Protection down, dry-lay, scribe, then bond: the order matters more in a difficult room than an easy one. The whole run is dry-fitted before any adhesive is opened.