Worktop fabrication in Holland Park

Yes. Holland Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W11, W14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. We pack for the tail lift we are actually going to use. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original panelling and shutter boxes stand out from the structural wall, so the face the units meet is joinery rather than plaster. 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. Where the floor drops away the front edge is cut to suit. 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. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. A square internal corner is a crack waiting.

A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. A remake is the price of guessing that measurement. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. A long walk from the van earns heavier corner protection.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Proven on the bench before dispatch.

A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. One setting serves both halves of a mitre. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

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. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Oversize on the scribe edge, always. 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 staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. A repeated specification comes off one batch.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Lower ground floor kitchens are reached by a stair with a winder in it, and the head height over that winder is lower than the room at either end. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Drainer grooves are machined flat, on a bed, never on site.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. A cast iron soil stack runs down the outside of the rear wall, so moving the sink means a fresh penetration through solid brick. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. The offcut is planned before the main piece is cut.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. Where the carry is long the pieces are strapped for handling rather than for the shortest route off the tail lift. The frame is filled back to front when the bay is booked short.

Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Crates are sized to clear the same openings the stone does.