Worktop fabrication in Havering-atte-Bower

Yes. Havering-atte-Bower is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM4. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. 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 small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. 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. The lanes up to the village are steep and tight, so we work off a smaller vehicle for the final leg when the slab size allows it.

Narrow rising lanes with few passing places and no pavements in stretches, but once on the property there is ample drive space and no restrictions. 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. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Proven on the bench before dispatch. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Same slab run, or it is not a match.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. The approved drawing is the instruction.