Worktop fabrication in Shad Thames

Yes. Shad Thames is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. 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.

Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how uneven the wall is changes which part of the slab a piece is cut from. Settled on the drawing, cut once. Measure the lift and the stair turn before you cut anything - a slab that fits the kitchen but not the lift is a wasted day here.

The street itself is cobbled and shaded by the overhead gantry bridges with no room to park a van beside the door; lifts are small original goods lifts or tight passenger cars, so oversized pieces have to be planned to fit the car diagonally or go up the stairs on edge. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Same slab run, or it is not a match. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Proven on the bench before dispatch.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The bench proves it before the van does. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. The island layout, including whether the ends are mitred down to the floor, needs settling before cutting, since mitred ends are cut in sequence with the top and dry-assembled as one unit. Quartz is the sensible default in a rental: nothing to seal, nothing to maintain, and nothing an incoming tenant needs briefing on. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. Dry-assembled before it leaves.