Worktop fabrication in Harmondsworth

Yes. Harmondsworth is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB7. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The crate spec follows the length of the carry. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

These have been added to over two centuries, so the kitchen is made of two or three walls of different ages and different thicknesses. Access is off a drive and through wide doors, so for once the piece size is not the constraint - the joins that go in are the ones we choose for layout and veining, not the ones the building forces. Lath and plaster is cut for, never cut into. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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 mitre is cut to the angle we found, not to ninety.

A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Polishing a piece that cannot reach the room wastes a day. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. We pack for the tail lift we are actually going to use.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same benches, 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. Ten metres of upstand out of what the tops left. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Spares crated with the batch and labelled by unit.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The return is nested first, because it fits worst. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Upstands leave the bench in lengths, not as one run. The range or Aga, the sink and the tap all need to be confirmed by model before nesting, because their clearances and hole positions set where the island can be cut. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Join positions belong to whoever signed.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Every internal doorway on the way through is another frame to clear, and internal doors come off their hinges rather than being propped open. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. Edge profiles are finished before the stone is ever stood on end.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Windows are small and set deep, which leaves the run under them dark and the reveal too deep for a plain square end. The joins here are chosen rather than forced, so they go where the veining and the gables want them. The piece is made for the room the builders left.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. Radius first, polish second, joins nowhere near.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. A steel goes in where the original back wall came out, and the ceiling steps down under it at the point the run passes beneath. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. A piece that needs trimming later was drawn wrong.