Worktop fabrication in St Paul's

Yes. St Paul's is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC4M. It is worked on our the City run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. The load plan follows from it. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Dot-and-dab plasterboard bellies at a taped internal angle, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. The lift diagonal governs the longest piece, so the join count is fixed at nesting and cannot be revisited on the day. Every join over a gable, clear of every cut-out. Stepped and setted paving around the cathedral will jar a trolley badly, so carry the last stretch on a frame rather than wheeling it over the flags.

The immediate cathedral surroundings are pedestrianised with bollards and stepped paving, so the van stops on a permitted street and the last 100m or more is on foot across paving that is unkind to a trolley. Service access to residential floors is usually shared with the commercial tenants and restricted to outside their delivery hours. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. It is settled on the bench, not on site.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. 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. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Nested for the job in front of us.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. 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. Machined to the real line. Sink, tap and hob need to be with us before machining, along with confirmation of whether the island is getting a breakfast overhang, since anything past roughly 300mm unsupported needs steel let into the carcasses and that has to be built in, not added later. Where the owner is not local, the decisions happen remotely, so photographs and a clear itemised drawing carry more weight than a showroom visit ever would. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak.