Worktop fabrication in East Dulwich

Yes. East Dulwich is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE22. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The back addition is a narrow two-storey outrigger with a single external wall, and the kitchen galley runs the length of it. 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. Every join over a gable, clear of every cut-out. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. A relief that deep changes how the piece is lifted.

The top step is rarely the end of it, because a door swinging out onto the landing has to be held back before a piece can come off the flight. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Machining happens after the carry length is fixed, not before. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. That is the last thing settled before dispatch.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Yield is what makes batching worth doing at all. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Short runs waste more slab than long ones do.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Mitres are cut as pairs, off one setting. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Cut to the plotted line, not the nominal one. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. 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. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. 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 mitre is cut to the angle we found, not to ninety.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. The corner is proven on the bench first.

A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. Every piece is drawn onto the slab before anything is cut, so the veining and the join positions are decided together rather than one after the other. Yield is worked on the slab, not on a calculator.

The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. It also decides where in the slab the piece is taken from, because a deep relief needs material behind it that a straight edge never asks for. Upstands leave the bench in lengths, not as one run.