Worktop fabrication in Woodside Park

Yes. Woodside Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N12. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. 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. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. That is the last thing settled before dispatch. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These houses usually sit in their own grounds with a long approach, so the carry from van to door is longer than anything inside the building. Access is off a drive and through wide doors, so for once the piece size is not the constraint - the joins that go in are the ones we choose for layout and veining, not the ones the building forces. Settled on the drawing, cut once. Big islands with multiple cut-outs need lifting in one piece with at least four hands, and the floor has to be checked for level across the whole island footprint first.

Some of the best access in the borough: long driveways, wide verged roads, off-street turning space and clear side gates to the rear garden. The only obstacle is usually a mature hedge or a gate post narrowing the side route. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Proven on the bench before dispatch.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. The bench proves it before the van does. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The drawing decides it, not the fitter. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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.