Worktop fabrication in Hyde Park Estate

Yes. Hyde Park Estate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W2. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. 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. 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.

Walls are thick, lime-plastered and built in a soft brick, so they take a scribe well and take a fixing badly. 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. Cobbled mews destroy trolley wheels and shake a slab - carry across the cobbles by hand rather than wheeling it, every time.

Blocks have underground parking with a 2m height barrier and a residents' lift, so the slab either comes down the ramp on a low-loader or gets walked from the street. Mews are cobbled and narrow with residents parked nose-in and no turning space. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. It is settled on the bench, not on site.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. Proven on the bench before dispatch.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. 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.

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. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. The approved drawing is the instruction.