Worktop fabrication in Benhilton

Yes. Benhilton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM1. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Sutton. 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. The load plan follows from it. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

The rear wall is usually a single brick thick and has been rendered, patched and re-rendered, so it bows in and out along the length of the run. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. What the wall does is on the drawing before the saw runs. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. 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.

Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. A remake is the price of guessing that measurement. 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. 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 to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Matched means the same block, not the same name. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Plot two has to match plot nine.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Long lengths go down first, short pieces fill around them. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. A plan-angle mitre closes on paper only. The sink and hob need to be on site and the run layout fixed before we start cutting, because moving a hob after the join position is set means recutting the whole piece. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. A verbal change is not an instruction.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Lath and plaster, a settled floor and a hall with a turn in it are the three things that decide how this job runs. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Nothing is machined until the drawing matches the building.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. The awkward corner is cut first, while the slab is whole.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. Where the carry is long the pieces are strapped for handling rather than for the shortest route off the tail lift. That is the last thing settled before dispatch.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Turning a heavy piece on edge indoors needs floor space at both ends of the turn, so the hall is cleared of furniture before anything comes off the van. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. Crates are sized to clear the same openings the stone does.