Worktop fabrication in Greenwich

Yes. Greenwich is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE10. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load plan follows from it. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A long piece has to come through the front door, down the hall, round the newel post and through a doorway with a step down into the addition. 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. The bench proves it before the van moves. Nothing here is square, template off the fitted units rather than the walls, and check the stair turn will take a 3m piece before quoting it as one.

The one-way system, the pedestrianised streets around the market and resident-permit-only bays mean a slab usually has to be walked in from wherever the van can legally stop, through a narrow Georgian front door and often down a tight winder stair to a lower-ground kitchen. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Proven on the bench before dispatch.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The bench proves it before the van does. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. The approved drawing is the instruction.