Worktop fabrication in Kentish Town

Yes. Kentish Town is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW5. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Stacking order is a parking decision here. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Sash windows in the addition sit low and the sill can land under standard worktop height, so the top is notched round it or the run stops short of it. 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. A scribe of twenty millimetres is machined, not fettled on site. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The radius goes in at the bench, not on site.

Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The cut list answers to the way in first. Where the household has used up the visitor permits it gets for the year, the remaining options are a suspension or a paid bay and both belong on the quote. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. The van is packed to suit the walk at the other end.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. 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. Nested for the job in front of us. 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. One drawing set, every unit.

The wall between the original room and the return usually carries a steel, and the plaster line above it steps, so anything full height behind the run is measured separately from the top. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Seams land over gables, never over a void. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. A deep relief needs material left behind it. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Remakes for our error are ours to carry.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. The notch is machined, never ground in later.

Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A single long run down one side puts every cut-out in one piece, so the sink, the hob and any drainer grooves all take material out of the same length. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. One setting serves both halves of a mitre.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Turning a heavy piece on edge indoors needs floor space at both ends of the turn, so the hall is cleared of furniture before anything comes off the van. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. A piece too long for the stairs is a piece cut twice.

Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. 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. Repeat pieces are cut from one drawing set, so what arrives on the bench is the same every time. The batch stays together to the crate.