Kitchen worktops in Willesden Green

Yes. Big late-Victorian and Edwardian houses, many in conservation areas, where the side return infill is the defining job and produces a wide rear kitchen with a 3.5m to 4.5m run plus a proper island. Whole-house owners often want a separate utility carved out of the old scullery, which means a second, smaller stone top in a different room. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation.

late Victorian villa, Edwardian double-fronted house and purpose-built 1930s flat. The addition is one room wide, so the run is a galley with a door at one end and a window at the other and no wall long enough for anything else. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The tops go on level even when nothing else is.

Wide streets but heavily parked, no off-street parking on most of the villas, and the fastest route to a rear extension is usually through the front door and the knocked-through reception because side alleys are shared with the neighbour. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every re-grip is a chance to chip a piece, so they are planned out.

Worktop installation, in that order. 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. A missing sink stops eight kitchens, not one. Conservation-area houses often keep original floor levels, so the extension floor and the old kitchen floor differ by 15mm to 30mm and the unit legs have to be levelled properly before templating.

It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Scribed one piece at a time. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A cleared crew arrives with its paperwork done. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Party wall settlement pulls the floor down at one side of the room, so a long run reads level at one end and not at the other. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Levelled under the units first.

The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. One datum for every run in the room.