Kitchen worktops in Wembley Central

Yes. Mostly rear kitchens in narrow terraces and interwar semis, many opened into the old dining room so the run turns an L along two walls. Multi-generation households here cook heavily, so we get asked for a second hob or a separate wet-prep sink far more than for an island, and full-height splashbacks behind a wok burner are routine. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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 van has to stand through both halves of the day.

Victorian bay-fronted terrace, 1930s semi, 1960s low-rise flat and 2010s infill block. A two-up two-down has a kitchen that was never designed to be one, so the run is short, the ceiling is low and every millimetre of depth gets argued over. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. A new top on a settled run needs the run corrected first.

Terraced streets off the High Road are permit-controlled with no driveway on the older stock, so a 3m slab usually comes off the van at the kerb and goes in through the front door and down the hall. Match-day and event traffic management around the stadium closes and diverts roads at short notice, so a morning slot is safer than an afternoon one. A step up off the pavement means the piece is lifted to the threshold before it is carried anywhere, and that first lift is the one that wants four hands. It is usually the full-height panels rather than the tops that will not make the turn, and that only shows up when they arrive. They stand upright in the van and stay upright until they are on the wall.

Worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. A repeated spec needs a repeatable splashback. Half these houses have had the kitchen moved at least once, so the walls behind the old units are rarely square and the templater should expect to scribe the back edge rather than trust the plaster.

Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Where the seam went before is not where it goes now. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. It is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. The panel takes its height off the steel. Supply-only material opens at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line rather than as a single number.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. An owner can wait for it; a void period cannot. Say what the building is at the booking stage and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice become part of the plan rather than a surprise.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Cottage terraces have no hall to speak of and the front door opens almost straight into the room, which makes the carry easier and the protection harder. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The fabric gets checked while it is open.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Stone wants gables where laminate needed none.

A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. The shape is already there to be measured, which makes the template straightforward and leaves the strip-out as the part that actually needs planning. The strip-out is the part worth planning.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. A door frame catches a tall panel long before a short one.