Worktop fabrication in Chase Cross

Yes. Chase Cross is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM5. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. 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. Loaded for the carry, not for the van. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. The bench work is about keeping enough solid material between them - a hob cut-out too near a sink cut-out leaves a narrow bridge that will not survive being lifted, so we either move the appliance positions on the template or split the run and put a join over a gable between the two cut-outs. Settled on the drawing, cut once. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins.

Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The crate is built to the same measurement. 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. The strapping answers to the walk, not the drive.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Cut for the slot, because the slot will not move. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. The batch is checked against itself before it leaves.

A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Apron mitres are bonded and polished before dispatch. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The drawing decides it, not the fitter. Final appliance positions and the actual sink and hob need to be settled before machining, because on a run this short a few centimetres of movement decides whether the piece can be cut in one. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Slabs for a programme are pulled together, not weekly.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. 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. Where the carry is long the pieces are strapped for handling rather than for the shortest route off the tail lift. Stacking order is a parking decision here.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Seams land over gables, never over a void.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. Plaster over blockwork is thin and hollow in patches, so anything fixed back to the wall needs a sound spot found first. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. The drawing decides it before the saw does.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. One setting serves both halves of a mitre.