Worktop fabrication in Monument

Yes. Monument is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC3R. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. Two trips off the van means two chances to catch a corner. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These kitchens are full of boxed soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing usually stops short of the ceiling. 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. A wall that leans is machined to the lean. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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.

Spindles and a newel cap stand proud of the string, so the usable width on a turn is measured to the handrail rather than to the wall behind it. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. A lift diagonal is a workshop dimension as much as a site one. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Packing takes its cue from the distance to the door.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Every flat cut off one drawing, errors included. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. The spares are cut while the slab is still open.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Cut-outs are machined with the piece bedded down. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

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. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. These kitchens were service rooms once, so they are long, narrow and further from the entrance than the floor plan suggests. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Yield is worked out against the run lengths the house allows.

Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Permitted works hours are commonly weekdays with a late start and an early finish, so a one-day fit is planned around the porter and the lift. 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. A century of movement is taken out at the bench.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Where the carry is long the pieces are strapped for handling rather than for the shortest route off the tail lift. What comes off first is settled before the doors shut.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Apron mitres are bonded and polished before dispatch.