Worktop fabrication in St Luke's

Yes. St Luke's is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC1V. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. 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. 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. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The original kitchen was a small service room, so what is there now is a knock-through and the junction between the two floors is rarely level. The lift, if there is one, is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a tight turn at every half-landing - so pieces get cut deliberately shorter than the slab allows and the kitchen is designed with more joins than it strictly needs. What the wall does is on the drawing before the saw runs. 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. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. A deep relief needs material left behind it.

A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full flight. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Edge profiles are finished before the stone is ever stood on end. 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. 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.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Yield is what makes batching worth doing at all. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Short runs waste more slab than long ones do.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. 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 supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The notch is machined, never ground in later. Access arrangements and the porter's permitted hours need confirming before we cut, because the agreed piece size is what the nesting is built around. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. The approved drawing is the instruction.

The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. A plan-angle mitre closes on paper only.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Where the stairwell is narrow enough that the stone travels on edge the polished face runs within an inch of the plaster, so the walls get boarded as well as the steps. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. The cut list answers to the way in first.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Old plaster built up over decades makes the scribing heavy, and that time has to be in the plan rather than found on the day. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. Vein direction is chosen across the joins, not within a piece.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Balcony access and long communal corridors are often the carry route, and both are narrower than they look with a piece on edge. Ceilings are high and external walls are thick, so the run under the window sits in a deep reveal and the back edge has to be templated to the reveal rather than assumed square. Lath and plaster is cut for, never cut into.