Worktop installation in Whitehall Park

Yes. Whitehall Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N19. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A top-floor conversion puts part of the kitchen under the slope of the roof, so the wall behind the run stops at head height along one side of the room. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Carried once, and carried properly. 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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.

Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. 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. 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 van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. Van to door is the distance that matters.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A tenant moves in on the date on the contract.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Nothing bears on plasterboard. 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. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. The awkward corner goes in first, not last.

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. An under-stairs cupboard eats one end of most of these kitchens, and the run stops at a door that has to keep opening. 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.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat.

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. Turning a heavy piece on edge indoors needs floor space at both ends of the turn, so the hall is cleared of furniture before anything comes off the van. 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.