Worktop fabrication in Lots Road

Yes. Lots Road is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW10. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. One movement off the van starts with how it went on. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Ceilings are high and there are usually no wall units, so a splashback runs to whatever height is decided rather than to a cupboard. The kitchen is open plan and the island is often long enough to need a join, and it sits in the middle of the room where every edge is visible, so the join goes over a gable and usually under the hob line where the eye does not follow it. Cut-outs are placed where the fabric will take them. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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 notch and a cut-out never share the same span.

Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Polishing a piece that cannot reach the room wastes a day. Streets near a ground or a venue have restrictions that come and go with the fixture list rather than with the time of day. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Kerbside unloading is planned in the racking, not improvised at the door.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. The batch stays together to the crate. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Reorderable later, or not specified.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Book-matched pieces are cut adjacent or not at all. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The casing gets plotted. The steel inside it does not. The island layout, including whether the ends are mitred down to the floor, needs settling before cutting, since mitred ends are cut in sequence with the top and dry-assembled as one unit. A let property is specified for durability and for a fixed window, and both of those are legitimate reasons to choose differently. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Join positions belong to whoever signed.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. No money is taken before the template happens. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Exposed brick and steel is the whole job here, because neither of them presents a flat plane to scribe to. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. An old house eats more slab than a new one.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. 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. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. A recut loses the sequence for good.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. On an event day the controls are wider, tighter and enforced harder than the signage suggests on any other morning of the week. Where the carry is long the pieces are strapped for handling rather than for the shortest route off the tail lift. The load plan follows from it.

Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Six kitchens, one slab run, one colour.