Kitchen worktops in Shoreditch

Yes. Loft conversions with open-plan kitchens along a brick wall, 4m runs and large islands, sitting next door to Victorian estate flats with 2.4m galleys. The loft jobs are the ones that want a single stone across island, worktops and splashback with the veining matched across all three. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. You are told before you commit to a date.

warehouse conversion, Victorian model-dwelling estate, ex-local-authority block and new-build apartment. Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how uneven the wall is changes which part of the slab a piece is cut from. Settled on the drawing, cut once.

One-way streets, weekend closures, market traffic and loading bans through the day, with permit parking enforced seven days in places. Converted buildings often have a goods lift or a loading door, which is worth confirming because the industrial stairwells are steep and open. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The prep list is not optional. Big island slabs live or die on the goods lift here, and if there is not one the island gets a mitred join and the client needs telling before anything is cut.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The bench proves it before the van does. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Machined to the real line. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.