Worktop fabrication in Tower Hill

Yes. Tower Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC3N. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. 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. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Loaded for the carry, not for the van. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Kitchens in these were fitted as a package to a repeating plan, so the carcasses are identical from flat to flat and so are their faults. We work to the internal depth of the car and the diagonal you can actually stand a piece up on with the doors closed, then nest to that, which routinely turns a two-piece kitchen into a three-piece one with an extra join over a gable. What the wall does is on the drawing before the saw runs. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Upstands leave the bench in lengths, not as one run.

Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. A piece too long for the stairs is a piece cut twice. 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. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. The strapping answers to the walk, not the drive.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Short runs waste more slab than long ones do. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. The annexe top comes off the main kitchen slab.

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Offcut sizes are decided before the first cut. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Radius first, polish second, joins nowhere near. 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. 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. Cut once, to the sheet that came back signed.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Nothing changes hands until after the template. The lift car, the loading bay and the building manager decide the piece sizes here, not the slab. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. Machined in the shop, where it belongs.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Suction lifters earn their keep on a straight flight and become a liability on a winder, where a handle standing out from the face is one more thing to catch on a wall. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Handling points are marked on the crate before it is strapped.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Stacking order is a parking decision here.

Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Undersides are polished where the piece is seen from below.