Worktop fabrication in Telegraph Hill

Yes. Telegraph Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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.

Original walls are thick, lime-plastered and rarely straight, which makes dry-laying and scribing the bulk of the fitting day. The joins here are chosen rather than forced, so they go where the veining and the gables want them. Settled on the drawing, cut once. A dozen steps up from the pavement then a stair inside is the normal profile here, anything over 2.5m needs three people or a joint.

Some of the steepest streets in the borough, with houses set high above the pavement behind long flights of steps and railings; conservation-area frontages mean no dropped kerbs and permit-only parking. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Proven on the bench before dispatch. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Nested for the job in front of us.

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. 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.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. The range or Aga, the sink and the tap all need to be confirmed by model before nesting, because their clearances and hole positions set where the island can be cut. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. Dry-assembled before it leaves.