Worktop fabrication in Hampstead Garden Suburb

Yes. Hampstead Garden Suburb is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW11, N2. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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.

Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. 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 bench proves it before the van moves. You work around what is already there in the Suburb, because the things that would normally be taken out to get a slab in, a window, a door frame, a fence panel, are exactly the things that are controlled.

Narrow lanes and closes, grass verges that vans are not welcome on, front paths through planted gardens, and hedges and gates the Trust will not allow to be temporarily removed. Off-street parking is limited and the carry from a legal stopping point is often long. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. Once the cut-outs are machined there is no going back on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. 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. Proven on the bench before dispatch. 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. Nested for the job in front of us.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Every join sits over a gable. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The approved drawing is the instruction.