Worktop fabrication in Abbey Wood

Yes. Abbey Wood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE2. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. One movement off the van starts with how it went on. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The kitchen is usually a rear room extended into the garden, with the original external wall now standing inside the run. What does drive the bench work is the knocked-through kitchen-diner: the return worktop and any peninsula are seen end-on from the dining side, so we nest the pieces so the veining carries across the internal corner in the same direction rather than turning through ninety degrees. The fall across the floor is in the cut list. 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. Radius first, polish second, joins nowhere near.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. It is settled on the bench, not on site. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Kerbside unloading is planned in the racking, not improvised at the door.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. 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. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Six kitchens, one slab run, one colour. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. A batch split across two weeks stops being a batch.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Drawn onto the slab before it is cut. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

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. A notch and a cut-out never share the same span. The peninsula end detail needs deciding up front - square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall - because a waterfall end has to be cut in sequence off the same part of the slab as the top. Access is arranged through a managing agent or a scheme office rather than with the household directly, so a date gets confirmed once in writing and moving it costs a fortnight. 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.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Where the side return has been filled in, one side of the new room is old brick and the other is new blockwork, and the two do not behave alike. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Cut-outs are set out from the units, not the appliance box.

Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Once the cut-outs are machined there is no going back on it.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Mitres are cut as pairs, off one setting.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The casing gets plotted. The steel inside it does not.