Worktop fabrication in West Hampstead

Yes. West Hampstead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW6. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load sheet carries the parking note with it. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Kitchens in these flats are frequently in what was a bedroom or a return room, so the window is tall and its sill sits close to worktop height. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. The shell decides the piece; the slab decides only the yield. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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 notch and a cut-out never share the same span.

A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Machining happens after the carry length is fixed, not before. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. Straps and battens are chosen for lifting, not just for transit.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Cut for the slot, because the slot will not move. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. The batch is checked against itself before it leaves.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Yield is worked on the slab, not on a calculator. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The casing gets plotted. The steel inside it does not. 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. 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. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Nothing is cut before the signature comes back.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Nothing changes hands until after the template. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Real dimensions go on the cut list, not nominal ones.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Every internal doorway on the way through is another frame to clear, and internal doors come off their hinges rather than being propped open. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. An access join is dressed to the same standard as any other.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. A booked slot dictates the order the frame is filled in.

It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. A conversion takes kitchen waste to a stack added to the outside of the building, which fixes the sink position long before anyone draws a layout. 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. Walls out of plumb are cut for at the bench.