Worktop fabrication in Stepney Green

Yes. Stepney Green 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. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. 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. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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 square internal corner is a crack waiting.

Hoisting is planned at quote stage or not at all, because the crew, the equipment and the permissions are three separate bookings. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. A piece is cut to the turn it has to clear. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Yield is what makes batching worth doing at all. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Drawn onto the slab before it is cut. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Oversize on the scribe edge, always. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The radius goes in at the bench, not on site.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Listing and conservation conditions apply to a good number of these, which constrains what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what goes on top of the units. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. The fall across the floor is in the cut list.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Mitres are cut as pairs, off one setting.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. 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. 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. Joins land over a cabinet gable and clear of every cut-out, because the alternative is a bridge of stone that will not survive the carry. What the wall does is on the drawing before the saw runs.