Worktop fabrication in Addington

Yes. Addington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The window sits in the middle of the run over the sink, and its board and cill set the limit on how tall an upstand can be. The bench work is about keeping enough solid material between them - a hob cut-out too near a sink cut-out leaves a narrow bridge that will not survive being lifted, so we either move the appliance positions on the template or split the run and put a join over a gable between the two cut-outs. Settled on the drawing, cut once. The 1960s houses often have the kitchen a step above the hall on a raised slab, which changes the finished worktop height, so we set out from the cabinet tops rather than a stated 900mm.

The village lanes are narrow with a sharp bend and no pavement in places, and the tram runs through on its own alignment, so unloading has to be off the carriageway. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. It is settled on the bench, not on site.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop design & quotation. 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. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Extended households run kitchens hard, and that pushes the specification towards granite or sintered stone rather than a light quartz. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Nested for the job in front of us.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. Final appliance positions and the actual sink and hob need to be settled before machining, because on a run this short a few centimetres of movement decides whether the piece can be cut in one. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak.