Worktop fabrication in Ardleigh Green

Yes. Ardleigh Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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 work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Where the original steel windows survive at the rear, the frame sits almost flush with the inside face and there is no reveal to lose a joint in. Most of these have a side passage and a back door, so a full-length piece can usually reach the kitchen without being cut down, and the piece sizing is driven by the slab rather than the route. The fall across the floor is in the cut list. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. A deep relief needs material left behind it.

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. 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. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. Kerbside unloading is planned in the racking, not improvised at the door.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. 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. A batch split across two weeks stops being a batch. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Matched means the same block, not the same name.

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. Mitres are cut as pairs, off one setting. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The notch is machined, never ground in later. 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. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Whoever holds the budget sees the drawing first.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. 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. Repeat pieces are cut from one drawing set, so what arrives on the bench is the same every time. Plot two has to match plot nine.

Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. 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.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. The larder had a slate or terrazzo shelf on its cold wall, heavy enough that it usually got left in place when everything else went. 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. What the wall does is on the drawing before the saw runs.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. The corner is proven on the bench first.