Worktop fabrication in Becontree

Yes. Becontree is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM8, RM9. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Copper pipework is clipped along the top of the skirting rather than buried in many of these, and it holds the carcasses off the wall by a few millimetres. Walls in the system-built blocks are concrete or panel and can bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and we cut the back edge to follow it rather than trimming on site with a grinder. A century of movement is taken out at the bench. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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 notch and a cut-out never share the same span.

Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Edge profiles are finished before the stone is ever stood on end. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and 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. 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. Matched means the same block, not the same name. 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Plot two has to match plot nine.

Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. 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. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The casing gets plotted. The steel inside it does not. The stack boxing needs to be in its final form and the sink and hob on site before we machine, since a boxing that gets re-clad afterwards throws the notch out. Planned programmes run several kitchens in sequence, so template, fabrication and fitting move as a rolling operation and one uncollected key holds up more than one flat. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Cut once, to the sheet that came back signed.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. That is the last thing settled before dispatch.

Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. 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. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The piece is nested around the scribe, not despite it.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Dry-assembled to the shape of your run.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. Every piece is drawn onto the slab before anything is cut, so the veining and the join positions are decided together rather than one after the other. Join count follows the shape, not the metreage.