Worktop installation in Whetstone

Yes. Whetstone is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N20. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

There is usually a rounded internal corner where the plan turns, and stone does not follow a curve without being cut to it. The porter has to be booked, the goods lift protected with the block's own blankets or our own boards, and communal carpet and stair runners covered from the entrance to the flat door before a single piece moves. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing.

Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Protection goes down along it first. 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. 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. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

It is inside the three we do most here, under worktop replacement. Either way: same template, same workshop, same fitters. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all. Have the works booking confirmed with the managing agent or porter in advance, with the lift slot and any parking permit or bay suspension in place. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. These kitchens were service rooms once, so they are long, narrow and further from the entrance than the floor plan suggests. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Silicone finishes the job; it does not rescue it.

Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Overhangs are measured off the finished carcass.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The communal stair is stone with a cast iron balustrade, and the winders leave very little room to turn a long piece. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Overhangs get brackets before anyone leans on them.