Kitchen worktops in Spitalfields

Yes. In the Georgian houses the kitchen is usually in the basement or rear ground floor, fitted between panelled walls with a run of 2.4m to 3m and no space for an island. Owners often want a low-profile, quiet installation that does not fight the period joinery, so slim edge profiles and undermounted sinks are the norm. 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 sheet carries the parking note with it.

early Georgian silk weavers' house, Victorian warehouse conversion and 1970s-80s infill flat. 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. A scribe of twenty millimetres is machined, not fettled on site.

Most of the area is a conservation area with a high concentration of listed houses, so any fixings into original fabric and any external hoisting need consent and a careful method. Streets are narrow, largely pedestrianised near the market and loading windows are early morning only, with staircases inside the houses that are steep, winding and original. A hoisted piece needs a clear drop zone, a lifting plan and someone stationed at street level, none of which gets arranged on the morning. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. A piece is cut to the turn it has to clear.

Worktop fabrication, in that order. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Plot two has to match plot nine. You cannot cut a listed house to suit the stone, so the stone gets templated and jointed to suit the house, including a joint mid-run just to get it down the stairs.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. 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. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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. Expect material from £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised on their own lines rather than folded into one figure.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Nothing is cut before the signature comes back. Mention the building when you book. The lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice then go into the plan instead of turning up on the day.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Chimney breasts and the alcoves either side of them break the run into short pieces before anyone has drawn a kitchen. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. A short piece is cut short on purpose.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Dry-assembled to the shape of your run.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The original front door is narrow and the hall is often the only way in, which puts a ceiling on the longest single piece. Pieces are cut, mitred, machined and dry-assembled on the bench before anything is loaded onto a van. Nothing is machined until the drawing matches the building.

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. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Hoisting is planned at quote stage or not at all, because the crew, the equipment and the permissions are three separate bookings. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. The saw never sees a length the hall will not take.