Worktop installation in White Hart Lane

Yes. White Hart Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N17. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. Where an event closes the road entirely, the van cannot be moved once it is in, which is a different problem from not being able to park at all. 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. The kerb decides the start time. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

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. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Old fabric gets handled as old fabric. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall.

A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. We would sooner lift a gate off its hinges than force a piece past it. A market day closes the street to traffic for the morning and hands it back in the afternoon, which moves the visit rather than cancelling it. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Van to door is the distance that matters.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together. 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. 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.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. 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. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Where the walls have been dry-lined over the old lath there is a void behind the board and no solid fixing until a batten is found. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Dust extraction indoors, or the cut happens outside.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. 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.