Worktop fabrication in Millbank

Yes. Millbank is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW1P. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. A booked slot dictates the order the frame is filled in. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Floor-to-ceiling glazing lights the worktop from one side all day, which shows every ripple in a polished surface and every gap at a scribe. Piece size is set by the lift car, not by the slab. Walls out of plumb are cut for at the bench. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. 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.

Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. 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. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. The yard reads the access note before it racks anything.

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. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn run. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Proven on the bench before dispatch. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Nested for the job in front of us.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The overhang is cut with its support already sized. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

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. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The piece is nested around the scribe, not despite it. Sink, tap and hob need to be with us before machining, along with confirmation of whether the island is getting a breakfast overhang, since anything past roughly 300mm unsupported needs steel let into the carcasses and that has to be built in, not added later. 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. Two names on a drawing, one of them decides.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. 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. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. Nothing leaves the bench expecting a square wall.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Open-plan living makes the kitchen furniture rather than utility, so the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab. We work to the internal depth of the car and the diagonal you can actually stand a piece up on with the doors closed, then nest to that, which routinely turns a two-piece kitchen into a three-piece one with an extra join over a gable. The template carries the building into the workshop.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. One drawing set, every unit.

Money does not move until the template is done. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. Underfloor heating in a screed rules out fixing into the floor and rules out standing anything heavy on a single point. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. Undermount cut-outs are polished before anything leaves.