Mile End kitchens
The kitchens we meet in Mile End
What worktop fabrication actually involves in Mile End depends on what you are fitting into, and around here that is not one thing. Terraces here are mostly split into flats, so kitchens are small and often carved out of a former bedroom or the back of a through-lounge, with runs of 1.8m to 2.4m. Landlord refits are the common job, done between tenancies with a hard end date. Either way, the next step is the same one: get someone out to look, and get the measurements written down.
The kitchen normally sits in the back addition or a later side return, which puts the run against the oldest and least straight wall in the building. Anything left to be cut on site instead of in the shop is a deliberate decision, not a fallback. Book-matching is decided at the slab, not at the saw.
Winders at the head of each flight are the tightest part of the climb and they are appreciably tighter than the straight run below them. 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. Nested to the route first and the slab second.
On these streets the housing is Victorian terrace, 1960s-70s council tower and purpose-built student and rental block. None of them is harder than the others; they are awkward in different ways.