Worktop installation in Turnpike Lane

Yes. Turnpike Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N8, N22. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

A conversion takes kitchen waste to a stack added to the outside of the building, which fixes the sink position long before anyone draws a layout. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The house sets the order of work. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment.

A window sill or a radiator on the half-landing takes the corner out of the turn at precisely the point the piece needs that corner. 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. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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 we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The back addition is frequently a single skin of brick rendered on both faces, which takes a fixing badly and moves with the weather. 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.

The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence.