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. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A period cottage has low ceilings, thick rubble-filled walls and a floor that has never been level, and the worktop is the thing that has to look straight. 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. The bench proves it before the van moves. Solid brick cottage walls are nowhere near plumb, so scribing a 900mm return can take longer than cutting the whole run did.

Village lanes are narrow with parking on both sides and nowhere to turn a Luton. The way in is off the Bath Road or the M4 spur and you reverse out the way you came. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. 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. 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. Proven on the bench before dispatch. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Same slab run, or it is not a match.

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 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.

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 drawing decides it, not the fitter. 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. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Dry-assembled before it leaves.