Worktop fabrication in Dollis Hill

Yes. Dollis Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW2, NW10. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The strapping answers to the walk, not the drive. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The extension is commonly a flat-roofed addition of the seventies or eighties with a shallower floor build-up, so the two halves of the room do not sit at one level. Most of these have a side passage and a back door, so a full-length piece can usually reach the kitchen without being cut down, and the piece sizing is driven by the slab rather than the route. The bench proves it before the van moves. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Machined to the real line.

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. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Stacking order is a parking decision here.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. 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 new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Yield is what makes batching worth doing at all. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Short runs waste more slab than long ones do.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Drawn onto the slab before it is cut. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

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. Cut oversize on purpose, every time. The peninsula end detail needs deciding up front - square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall - because a waterfall end has to be cut in sequence off the same part of the slab as the top. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Late changes are priced rather than absorbed quietly.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. It is settled on the bench, not on site.

Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The relief comes out of the slab, not the fitter.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. 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 workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. Geometry first, then the saw.

How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. The annexe top comes off the main kitchen slab.