Worktop fabrication in Canonbury

Yes. Canonbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N1. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Kerbside unloading is planned in the racking, not improvised at the door. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

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. The other constraint is the hall: a piece has to come through the front door, round the newel at the foot of the stairs and through a doorway into the back kitchen, so we size the pieces to the tightest turn on that route before we nest anything, which sometimes means splitting a run that would otherwise have gone in whole. Lath and plaster is cut for, never cut into. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Nothing leaves the bench expecting a square wall.

Two people will walk a two-metre piece in through a front door; the same hall with a three-metre piece wants four, purely because nobody can let go halfway. 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. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. The load plan follows from it.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Small kitchens are more bench work per square metre. 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Cut for the slot, because the slot will not move.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Apron mitres are bonded and polished before dispatch. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. The sink and hob need to be on site and the run layout fixed before we start cutting, because moving a hob after the join position is set means recutting the whole piece. 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. Recut time comes out of the access window.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. No money changes hands before the template. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. There is usually a step down into the back addition, so the kitchen floor and the hall floor are not the same level and neither of them is flat. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Vein direction is chosen across the joins, not within a piece.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Seams land over gables, never over a void.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. Mitres are dry-assembled before the polisher touches them.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. A lift diagonal is a workshop dimension as much as a site one.