Worktop fabrication in Mayfair

Yes. Mayfair is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W1J, W1K, W1S. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Nothing gets buried behind something it has to follow off. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

These houses usually sit in their own grounds with a long approach, so the carry from van to door is longer than anything inside the building. Access is off a drive and through wide doors, so for once the piece size is not the constraint - the joins that go in are the ones we choose for layout and veining, not the ones the building forces. A scribe of twenty millimetres is machined, not fettled on site. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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 casing gets plotted. The steel inside it does not.

Blankets on the walls and a board on the floor go in before the first piece, because a scratched car becomes a bill from the managing agent long after the kitchen is finished. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Edge profiles are finished before the stone is ever stood on end. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. A short window means one pass, so the rack suits one pass.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. A batch split across two weeks stops being a batch. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Matched means the same block, not the same name.

On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. A recut loses the sequence for good. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The piece is nested around the scribe, not despite it. The range or Aga, the sink and the tap all need to be confirmed by model before nesting, because their clearances and hole positions set where the island can be cut. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Cut once, to the sheet that came back signed.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. 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. Where the permit is a digital session rather than a paper one, somebody in the house has to start it at the hour the van actually arrives. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. The crate spec follows the length of the carry.

Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Nothing leaves the bench expecting a square wall.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Walls that are old, thick and rarely straight make dry-laying and scribing the bulk of the day. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Joins over gables, always.

Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Plot two has to match plot nine.