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. That is the last thing settled before dispatch. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These blocks were built with a lift from new, which will usually take a worktop and almost never takes a full-length island piece. 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. Settled on the drawing, cut once. Stone stairs and iron rails mean corner protection on every turn, since a chipped edge on the way up is the most common loss on these blocks.

Old Street and City Road are red routes, and the estates have courtyards with bollards and narrow arched entries built for handcarts rather than vans. The older blocks are walk-ups with stone stairs and iron balustrades that do not forgive a swung slab. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Proven on the bench before dispatch. 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. Nested for the job in front of us.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Every join sits over a gable. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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.