Worktop fabrication in Bankside

Yes. Bankside is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load plan follows from it. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen usually sits along the internal spine of the plan with the glazing at the far end, so the run itself has no window and no daylight on it. Piece size is set by the lift car, not by the slab. What leaves the bench is what fits the room. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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.

Blankets on the walls and a board on the floor go in before the first piece, because a scratched car becomes a bill from the managing agent long after the kitchen is finished. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Machining happens after the carry length is fixed, not before. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. One kept offcut saves a whole flat later. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Repeat runs come off a jig, not a fresh setout.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. 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. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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. Sink, tap and hob need to be with us before machining, along with confirmation of whether the island is getting a breakfast overhang, since anything past roughly 300mm unsupported needs steel let into the carcasses and that has to be built in, not added later. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Late changes are priced rather than absorbed quietly.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. The corner is proven on the bench first.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Lift doors close on a timer that takes no account of somebody holding a worktop, so a pair of hands stays on the buttons at each end. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. An access join is dressed to the same standard as any other.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. No money is taken before the template happens. Underfloor heating in a screed rules out fixing into the floor and rules out standing anything heavy on a single point. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. A short piece is cut short on purpose.

How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. Repeat pieces are cut from one drawing set, so what arrives on the bench is the same every time. One setout, eight identical tops.