Worktop fabrication in Brockley

Yes. Brockley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE4. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. A bay suspension carries a fee and a notice period, and the notice period is the part that catches people out when a date moves. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. One movement off the van starts with how it went on. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The larder under the stairs is usually still there and still opens into the kitchen, so the run stops at a door that cannot be moved. 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. The fall across the floor is in the cut list. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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.

A car will often hold more than its doors will admit, and it is the clear width between the door edges that a piece actually has to pass through. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The longest piece is capped in the workshop, deliberately. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Kerbside unloading is planned in the racking, not improvised at the door.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. The annexe top comes off the main kitchen slab. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Small kitchens are more bench work per square metre.

A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink 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. The corner is proven on the bench first. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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. 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. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. One approval, one cut, one delivery.

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. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. Where the carry is long the pieces are strapped for handling rather than for the shortest route off the tail lift. The load plan follows from it.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Yield is worked on the slab, not on a calculator.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. There is usually a step down into the back addition, so the kitchen floor and the hall floor are not the same level and neither of them is flat. 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.

Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Nothing leaves the bench longer than the way in allows.