Worktop fabrication in Hackney Central

Yes. Hackney Central is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E8, E9. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. The crate spec follows the length of the carry. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The flat entrance door and the internal doorways are usually tighter than the communal stairs, which is the opposite of what most people assume. 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. Settled on the drawing, cut once. 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. The relief comes out of the slab, not the fitter.

Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. A lift diagonal is a workshop dimension as much as a site one. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. We pack for the tail lift we are actually going to use.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Nested for the job in front of us. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. One drawing set, every unit.

A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. A waterfall leg is cut in sequence off its own top. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

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. Geometry first, then the saw. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Nothing is cut before the signature comes back.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Thinner material is specified where the carry demands it.

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. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. A square internal corner is a crack waiting.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Cut-outs are set out from the units, not the appliance box.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. 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. It also decides where in the slab the piece is taken from, because a deep relief needs material behind it that a straight edge never asks for. Oversize on the scribe edge, always.