Worktop fabrication in Crofton Park

Yes. Crofton Park 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. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load plan follows from it. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. The other constraint is the hall: a piece has to come through the front door, round the newel at the foot of the stairs and through a doorway into the back kitchen, so we size the pieces to the tightest turn on that route before we nest anything, which sometimes means splitting a run that would otherwise have gone in whole. A settled corner leaves the bench as a real angle. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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 drawing decides it, not the fitter.

Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Handling points are marked on the crate before it is strapped. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. One setout, eight identical tops. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Yield is what makes batching worth doing at all.

Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Machined to the real line. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Dry-assembled before it leaves.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. Cut oversize on purpose, every time.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. A bay-fronted terrace has a long hall running past the stairs to the kitchen, so the hall turn caps the piece length before the run length does. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. Nothing is machined square because a plan says square.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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.