Worktop fabrication in Gipsy Hill

Yes. Gipsy Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE19, SE27. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. A timed unload is planned into the rack before it leaves. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A service duct runs between the kitchen and the bathroom stacked above it, and access to that duct stays open whatever the layout does. The kitchen is usually a small square or L-shaped room reached through a narrow entrance lobby and a standard internal doorway, so the limit on piece length is the turn out of the lobby, and short runs mean joins are often avoidable altogether if the layout is nested tightly. The fall across the floor is in the cut list. 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. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Cut oversize on purpose, every time.

Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing states a maximum length and the shop honours it. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Nothing gets buried behind something it has to follow off.

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. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Proven on the bench before dispatch. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Nested for the job in front of us.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Yield is worked on the slab, not on a calculator. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The relief comes out of the slab, not the fitter. The stack boxing needs to be in its final form and the sink and hob on site before we machine, since a boxing that gets re-clad afterwards throws the notch out. 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. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. We check who is entitled to approve it.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. 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. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. Geometry first, then the saw.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. The return is nested first, because it fits worst.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. The external wall is a concrete panel with a modest window, so the run under it sits in a shallow reveal with a hard cill. Walls in the system-built blocks are concrete or panel and can bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and we cut the back edge to follow it rather than trimming on site with a grinder. What the wall does is on the drawing before the saw runs.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Front doors off the deck open into a lobby barely wider than the door itself, and the turn out of it is a right angle. The notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius, because a square internal corner there is where a top fails. Lath and plaster is cut for, never cut into.