Worktop fabrication in Fortis Green

Yes. Fortis Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N10, N2. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The van is packed to suit the walk at the other end. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Deep original skirting is often left in behind the units, standing them off the wall, so the back edge of the stone is plotted where the carcasses actually sit. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. The shell decides the piece; the slab decides only the yield. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Cut oversize on purpose, every time.

Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. A join added for access is placed over a gable, never mid-span. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. A timed unload is planned into the rack before it leaves.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Small kitchens are more bench work per square metre. 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. 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.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The corner is proven on the bench first. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

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. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The relief comes out of the slab, not the fitter. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. One batch wherever the specification repeats.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. No money is taken before the template happens. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. 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. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. An old house eats more slab than a new one.

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. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. The drawing states a maximum length and the shop honours it.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Nothing gets buried behind something it has to follow off.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. 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. Pieces are cut, mitred, machined and dry-assembled on the bench before anything is loaded onto a van. Cut-outs are set out from the units, not the appliance box.