Worktop fabrication in St Katharine Docks

Yes. St Katharine Docks is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1W. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Ceiling heights are low and the window head sits close to the ceiling, so the band of wall above the worktop is short. The kitchen is usually a small square or L-shaped room reached through a narrow entrance lobby and a standard internal doorway, so the limit on piece length is the turn out of the lobby, and short runs mean joins are often avoidable altogether if the layout is nested tightly. What the shell demands is solved in the shop, not the kitchen. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. The radius goes in at the bench, not on site.

Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Handling points are marked on the crate before it is strapped. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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 especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Short runs waste more slab than long ones do. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. The annexe top comes off the main kitchen slab.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. A deep relief needs material left behind it. The stack boxing needs to be in its final form and the sink and hob on site before we machine, since a boxing that gets re-clad afterwards throws the notch out. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The approved drawing is the instruction.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The original units were screwed to timber grounds set into the wall, and where those were torn out the plaster was patched rather than replaced. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Real dimensions go on the cut list, not nominal ones.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The notch is machined, never ground in later.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. These blocks have been through at least one refurbishment programme, so the kitchen is a modern unit fit inside an old shell. Walls in the system-built blocks are concrete or panel and can bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and we cut the back edge to follow it rather than trimming on site with a grinder. Settled on the drawing, cut once.