Kitchen worktops in Woodside Park

Yes. Large detached houses on wide plots where the kitchen is often a full-width rear room already, so the job is a proper redesign with a 3m island, a range with a stone surround, and a separate utility off the garage. Second ovens, wine fridges and boiling taps are standard here and each one takes another cut-out. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day.

1930s detached, large 1930s semi and 1960s-70s executive detached. Internal walls are lath and plaster on studs with heavy framing behind, so a fixing finds either nothing at all or something very solid. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork.

Some of the best access in the borough: long driveways, wide verged roads, off-street turning space and clear side gates to the rear garden. The only obstacle is usually a mature hedge or a gate post narrowing the side route. A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Load order is set by the order the pieces will be carried.

Worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Matched means the same block, not the same name. Big islands with multiple cut-outs need lifting in one piece with at least four hands, and the floor has to be checked for level across the whole island footprint first.

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. One datum for every run in the room. 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. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. A landlord repeating a kitchen gets the same detail cut. 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.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. These kitchens carry two ovens, a wine cabinet and a boiling tap, so the cut-out count runs well ahead of what the length of the runs suggests. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The route is walked before the first lift.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Floors are boards over joists with a solid floor only in the service rooms, and the two meet somewhere in the middle of the kitchen. Getting in is straightforward, so the day is spent dry-laying and scribing to walls that have never been straight. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. 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. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The drawing decides it, not the fitter.

Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Plot two has to match plot nine.