Worktop fabrication in Marylebone

Yes. Marylebone is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W1U, W1G, W1H. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The frame is filled back to front when the bay is booked short. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. The lift, if there is one, is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a tight turn at every half-landing - so pieces get cut deliberately shorter than the slab allows and the kitchen is designed with more joins than it strictly needs. Thin partitions get shallower overhangs, decided in the shop. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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.

A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Edge profiles are finished before the stone is ever stood on end. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Handling counts are decided here, not on the pavement.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Quartz reorders in five years, a granite block does not. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Every flat cut off one drawing, errors included.

A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. A recut loses the sequence for good. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Machined to the real line. Access arrangements and the porter's permitted hours need confirming before we cut, because the agreed piece size is what the nesting is built around. Where a letting agent sits between us and the owner the approval passes through two sets of hands, so a quote has to be clear enough to forward without a covering explanation. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. The approved drawing is the instruction.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Every piece is labelled to its place in the run.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink does. Every piece is drawn onto the slab before anything is cut, so the veining and the join positions are decided together rather than one after the other. Short pieces cost bench time, not slab area.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. External walls are thick and the run under the window sits in a deep reveal that has to be templated rather than assumed square. Ceilings are high and external walls are thick, so the run under the window sits in a deep reveal and the back edge has to be templated to the reveal rather than assumed square. The template carries the building into the workshop.

Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Freeholder consent, a works agreement and proof of insurance are often wanted before a van is allowed to unload. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. Real dimensions go on the cut list, not nominal ones.