Worktop fabrication in Cudham

Yes. Cudham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TN14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. Stacking order is a parking decision here. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Windows are small and set deep, which leaves the run under them dark and the reveal too deep for a plain square end. Islands here regularly run longer than a slab, so the join is nested to sit over an internal gable and positioned so it does not run through the hob cut-out, and on a heavily veined stone we nest the island and the back run together so the movement relates across the room. The bow in an old wall is cut for, not sanded out. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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.

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. 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 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. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. The van is packed to suit the walk at the other end.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. 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. Spares crated with the batch and labelled by unit. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Same slab run, or it is not a match.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Long lengths go down first, short pieces fill around them. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The drawing decides it, not the fitter. The range or Aga, the sink and the tap all need to be confirmed by model before nesting, because their clearances and hole positions set where the island can be cut. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Late changes are priced rather than absorbed quietly.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. 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. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. Machined to the real line.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. A waterfall leg is cut in sequence off its own top.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. A period cottage has low ceilings, thick rubble-filled walls and a floor that has never been level, and the worktop is the thing that has to look straight. The joins here are chosen rather than forced, so they go where the veining and the gables want them. A scribe of twenty millimetres is machined, not fettled on site.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. 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.