Worktop fabrication in South Kensington

Yes. South Kensington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW7. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Kerbside unloading is planned in the racking, not improvised at the door. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The original larder or store cupboard usually survives in a corner, and that alcove is deeper than the units and squarer than the walls around it. 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. A wall that leans is machined to the lean. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. A relief that deep changes how the piece is lifted.

The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Nesting follows the route, not the other way round. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. One setout, eight identical tops. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Yield is what makes batching worth doing at all.

On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Undersides are polished where the piece is seen from below. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Cut to the plotted line, not the nominal one. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Join positions belong to whoever signed.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The crate is built to the same measurement.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Rear rooms of this date have a wide sash or a pair of garden doors, so a good deal of the wall the run wants is glass. The other constraint is the hall: a piece has to come through the front door, round the newel at the foot of the stairs and through a doorway into the back kitchen, so we size the pieces to the tightest turn on that route before we nest anything, which sometimes means splitting a run that would otherwise have gone in whole. A century of movement is taken out at the bench.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Internal walls are lath on timber studs while the flank walls are brick, so two walls in the same kitchen take a fixing completely differently. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. Cut-outs are placed where the fabric will take them.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw.