Kitchen worktops in Willesden

Yes. Two-storey terraces where the kitchen sits in the back addition and the reception has usually been knocked through, so the kitchen itself stays modest at 3m to 4m of total run with a slim peninsula at the doorway. Rear extensions here tend to be shallow because gardens are short, which favours a longer single wall over an island. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. 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. A one-hour window will not hold a two-way job.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace and post-war infill flat. These were built with a scullery that has since been swallowed by an extension, leaving a change of floor level roughly where the run crosses. 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. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in.

Kerbside only on almost everything, permit zones through the day, and front doors reached up two or three steps, so a slab of any length needs the hall clear and the newel post checked for clearance. A hall that widens further in is still only as good as its tightest point, and that point is usually within a metre of the front door. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there. The hall dog-leg into the back room is the thing that catches people out; measure the diagonal at the turn before agreeing a single-piece top.

An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Carcasses have to be sound first. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Sealant seals. It does not fit. 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.

One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A cleared crew arrives with its paperwork done. 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.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Units checked before stone goes on them.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A front path with a gate and a turn or two adds handling before the door is even reached, and every handling movement is another chance to catch a corner. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The crew size follows from it.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The rear room has a bay or a wide window onto the garden, so the sink length is short and the real working length is on the return. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Height change is checked before we cut.