Worktop fabrication in Spitalfields

Yes. Spitalfields is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A basement kitchen has a flagged or concrete floor laid straight onto the ground, so it is solid, cold and rarely within ten millimetres of level. 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. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Cut to the plotted line, not the nominal one.

Hoisting is planned at quote stage or not at all, because the crew, the equipment and the permissions are three separate bookings. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. A piece too long for the stairs is a piece cut twice. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. 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. One setout, eight identical tops. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Yield is what makes batching worth doing at all.

A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Join count follows the shape, not the metreage. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The mitre is cut to the angle we found, not to ninety. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Join positions belong to whoever signed.

The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. If a hoist is the only way in then the piece sizes are designed around the opening, and the sash or casement usually has to come out first. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. Handling points are marked on the crate before it is strapped.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. 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 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. Older houses come off the bench with longer scribes.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. Upstands leave the bench in lengths, not as one run.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Drawn onto the slab before it is cut.