Worktop fabrication in Broad Green

Yes. Broad Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. The crate spec follows the length of the carry. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. A wall that leans is machined to the lean. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. The notch is machined, never ground in later.

Carrying down a flight is not the easier direction, because the weight runs ahead of the crew and whoever is at the bottom has no way of stopping a slip. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The maximum piece is written on the drawing in millimetres. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. We pack for the tail lift we are actually going to use.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop replacement. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Proven on the bench before dispatch. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Nested for the job in front of us.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Cut-outs are machined with the piece bedded down. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. One approval, one cut, one delivery.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The measured wall angle travels to the saw.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Apron mitres are bonded and polished before dispatch.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Kitchens in these flats are frequently in what was a bedroom or a return room, so the window is tall and its sill sits close to worktop height. Joins land over a cabinet gable and clear of every cut-out, because the alternative is a bridge of stone that will not survive the carry. A century of movement is taken out at the bench.

The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Chimney breasts and the alcoves either side of them break the run into short pieces before anyone has drawn a kitchen. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. The awkward corner is cut first, while the slab is whole.