Worktop fabrication in Pitshanger

Yes. Pitshanger is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. What comes off first is settled before the doors shut. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

The boiler has usually been moved out to the garage or the utility, leaving a capped flue and a run of dead pipework in the kitchen wall. What does drive the bench work is the knocked-through kitchen-diner: the return worktop and any peninsula are seen end-on from the dining side, so we nest the pieces so the veining carries across the internal corner in the same direction rather than turning through ninety degrees. The bench proves it before the van moves. 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. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The cut list answers to the way in first. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. The load sheet carries the parking note with it.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop installation first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. 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. Quartz reorders in five years, a granite block does not. 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. Every flat cut off one drawing, errors included.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. 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.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The drawing decides it, not the fitter. The peninsula end detail needs deciding up front - square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall - because a waterfall end has to be cut in sequence off the same part of the slab as the top. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Nothing is cut before the signature comes back.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. A shallow bay or a squared-off rear window means the run beneath it is rarely the same depth at both ends. 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.

How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. The spares are cut while the slab is still open.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. Machined to the real line.

An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Air bricks that once ventilated the original floor now open into the extension, and one of them is generally sitting behind a base unit. Where a full length can come down the side and in at the back, the nest follows the slab instead of the building. Every join over a gable, clear of every cut-out.