Worktop fabrication in Gidea Park

Yes. Gidea Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM2. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. A timed unload is planned into the rack before it leaves. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Solid brick with a render coat is firm to work against and out of plumb, so the scribe at worktop height is different from the one at plinth 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. Walls out of plumb are cut for at the bench. 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. Cut oversize on purpose, every time.

The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. A remake is the price of guessing that measurement. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. Nothing gets buried behind something it has to follow off.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. 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. Small kitchens are more bench work per square metre. 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. Cut for the slot, because the slot will not move.

Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. 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. The relief comes out of the slab, not the fitter. 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. 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. One approval, one cut, one delivery.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The plaster is a thick float and set over brick that has blown in patches, so a wall sounds solid in one place and hollow a hand-span away. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. The saw only ever sees the templated dimensions.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. The kitchen door opens inwards into the middle of a run, so the usable length of that wall stops well short of the corner. Pieces are cut, mitred, machined and dry-assembled on the bench before anything is loaded onto a van. A piece that needs trimming later was drawn wrong.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. Crates are sized to clear the same openings the stone does.

Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. The workshop cuts to that constraint, so a piece leaves the bench already sized to reach where it is going. Load order is set by the order the pieces will be carried.