Worktop fabrication in Swiss Cottage

Yes. Swiss Cottage is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW3, NW6. It is run from the Watford side, covering Hertfordshire & North London. 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 rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. 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.

Inter-war purpose-built blocks have curved external walls and steel windows, so a run along an outside wall is following a genuine curve rather than a bow. Ceilings are high and external walls are thick, so the run under the window sits in a deep reveal and the back edge has to be templated to the reveal rather than assumed square. The bench proves it before the van moves. Interwar block kitchens sit on a solid concrete floor with a boxed-in soil stack in the corner, so allow for a notch and a scribe rather than assuming a clean 90-degree return.

Finchley Road is a red route with no stopping, so loading happens on the side streets under a Monday to Friday CPZ. Most blocks have a lift, but the older 1930s cars are small and shallow and a 3m slab will not stand up inside one. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. 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 installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Same slab run, or it is not a match. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Proven on the bench before dispatch.

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. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. 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.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Machined to the real line. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak.