Worktop fabrication in Canary Wharf

Yes. Canary Wharf is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E14. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. That is the last thing settled before dispatch. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A tower block runs one or two lifts for many floors, so a lift out of service postpones a job rather than making it harder. Walls in the system-built blocks are concrete or panel and can bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and we cut the back edge to follow it rather than trimming on site with a grinder. The bench proves it before the van moves. The paperwork and the goods lift booking take longer than the fit, and a missed slot means the slab goes back on the van.

This is a privately managed estate: vehicles need a permit, deliveries go through designated basement loading docks with height restrictions around 2m, and security clearance plus insurance documents are checked at the gate. Goods lifts are booked in advance by the building manager in fixed slots, and residential floors are reached only after a long basement corridor trolley run. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. 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. Proven on the bench before dispatch. 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Nested for the job in front of us.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Every join sits over a gable. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are 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. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Machined to the real line. The stack boxing needs to be in its final form and the sink and hob on site before we machine, since a boxing that gets re-clad afterwards throws the notch out. 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 workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Dry-assembled before it leaves.