Worktop fabrication in Olympia

Yes. Olympia is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. An event-day suspension can override a bay that is perfectly usable the rest of the week, so a booked space gets checked again nearer the time. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load plan follows from it. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. 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. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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 measured wall angle travels to the saw.

Whether the kitchen sits straight ahead or off a turn at the end of the hall changes the maximum piece far more than the hall width does. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. It is settled on the bench, not on site. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Plot two has to match plot nine. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Quartz reorders in five years, a granite block does not.

An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. 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. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Yield drops the moment the back edge stops being straight. The sink and hob need to be on site and the run layout fixed before we start cutting, because moving a hob after the join position is set means recutting the whole piece. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Late changes are priced rather than absorbed quietly.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Once the cut-outs are machined there is no going back on it.

Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Listing and conservation conditions apply to a good number of these, which constrains what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what goes on top of the units. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. The saw follows the template, never the plan.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Edge work on a return matches edge work on a length.

What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. A basement kitchen has a flagged or concrete floor laid straight onto the ground, so it is solid, cold and rarely within ten millimetres of level. A scribed end into an alcove is cut long on the bench and eased back on site, since the alcove is never the same width top and bottom. What leaves the bench is what fits the room.