Worktop fabrication in Cranham

Yes. Cranham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A boiler in a cupboard on the kitchen wall is normal in this stock, and its position is fixed by its flue. These have a back door straight into the kitchen so getting pieces in is rarely the issue, but the room is small and the runs are short, which puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on a single length of stone. Nested to the route first and the slab second. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Nothing leaves the bench expecting a square wall.

The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. An access join is dressed to the same standard as any other. 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. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. The strapping answers to the walk, not the drive.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. One setout, eight identical tops. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Yield is what makes batching worth doing at all.

The two returns in a U are close to the same size and it is tempting to nest them side by side, except that the veining then mirrors across the room and reads as deliberate for the wrong reason. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Long lengths go down first, short pieces fill around them. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. 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. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. A landlord repeating a kitchen gets the same detail cut.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Ceiling heights dropped after the war, so there is less wall between the worktop and the wall units than in anything older. 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. The saw follows the template, never the plan.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. The longest piece is capped in the workshop, deliberately.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. The drawing decides it, not the fitter.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Three runs is three scribes and three separate lifts, so a U takes longer on site than its metreage suggests even on a day when nothing goes wrong. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. A waterfall leg is cut in sequence off its own top.