Worktop fabrication in St Luke's

Yes. St Luke's is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC1V. It is run from the Watford side, covering Hertfordshire & North London. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. 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.

The original kitchen was a small service room, so what is there now is a knock-through and the junction between the two floors is rarely level. The lift, if there is one, is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a tight turn at every half-landing - so pieces get cut deliberately shorter than the slab allows and the kitchen is designed with more joins than it strictly needs. The bench proves it before the van moves. Stone stairs and iron rails mean corner protection on every turn, since a chipped edge on the way up is the most common loss on these blocks.

Old Street and City Road are red routes, and the estates have courtyards with bollards and narrow arched entries built for handcarts rather than vans. The older blocks are walk-ups with stone stairs and iron balustrades that do not forgive a swung slab. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. It is settled on the bench, not on site. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. 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. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Same slab run, or it is not a match.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. 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.

Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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. Access arrangements and the porter's permitted hours need confirming before we cut, because the agreed piece size is what the nesting is built around. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak.