Worktop fabrication in Soho

Yes. Soho is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W1D, W1F. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. 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.

The closet wing is a narrow projection at the back with windows on two sides, which leaves very little continuous wall for a run. 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. The bow in an old wall is cut for, not sanded out. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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.

Timber nosings chip under a slipped edge, so the treads are covered along the whole flight rather than only at the landings. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Polishing a piece that cannot reach the room wastes a day. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. 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. Repeat runs come off a jig, not a fresh setout. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. One setout, eight identical tops.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Dry-assembled to the shape of your run. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Cut oversize on purpose, every time. 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. 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. Recut time comes out of the access window.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. There is usually a step down into the back addition, so the kitchen floor and the hall floor are not the same level and neither of them is flat. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Proven on the bench, then loaded.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. That is the last thing settled before dispatch.

The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Original panelling and shutter boxes stand out from the structural wall, so the face the units meet is joinery rather than plaster. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. A scribe of twenty millimetres is machined, not fettled on site.

Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. The relief comes out of the slab, not the fitter.