Worktop fabrication in Rush Green

Yes. Rush Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM7. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. 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. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. The load plan follows from it. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These kitchens have been retiled at least twice, and stripping the tiles takes the bottom band of plaster with them because the old laminate ran underneath rather than up to them. Most of these have a side passage and a back door, so a full-length piece can usually reach the kitchen without being cut down, and the piece sizing is driven by the slab rather than the route. Settled on the drawing, cut once. Shared side passages between semi pairs are legally the neighbour's half as well, so we ask before wheeling a slab down one.

Straightforward suburban streets with dropped kerbs on many houses and a shared side passage between semi pairs, though the main roads through here carry hospital traffic and are not somewhere to unload. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. Once the cut-outs are machined there is no going back on it.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. 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. Same slab run, or it is not a match. 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Nested for the job in front of us.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak.