Worktop fabrication in Bickley

Yes. Bickley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR1. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. That is the last thing settled before dispatch. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These houses usually sit in their own grounds with a long approach, so the carry from van to door is longer than anything inside the building. Islands here regularly run longer than a slab, so the join is nested to sit over an internal gable and positioned so it does not run through the hob cut-out, and on a heavily veined stone we nest the island and the back run together so the movement relates across the room. The bench proves it before the van moves. The stock here justifies thicker material and mitred waterfall ends, and clients expect the island to be a single piece, so we plan the slab layout around the island first and let the perimeter take the joints.

Wide roads, in-and-out gravel drives and generous frontages mean the van gets close to the door, but the front steps on the older villas are often deep and the kitchen sits at the back down a long hallway. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. It is settled on the bench, not on site. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop design & quotation. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. 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. 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.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Every join sits over a gable. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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. The range or Aga, the sink and the tap all need to be confirmed by model before nesting, because their clearances and hole positions set where the island can be cut. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Dry-assembled before it leaves.