Worktop fabrication in Greenwich Peninsula

Yes. Greenwich Peninsula is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE10. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. A short window means one pass, so the rack suits one pass. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Many of these kitchens are a fitted pod dropped into open floor, so three sides are free and only the fourth is ever scribed. The kitchen is open plan and the island is often long enough to need a join, and it sits in the middle of the room where every edge is visible, so the join goes over a gable and usually under the hob line where the eye does not follow it. Thin partitions get shallower overhangs, decided in the shop. A downstand over a run caps wall unit height before it caps anything else, and the splashback then takes its height from the steel rather than from the units. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Cut to the plotted line, not the nominal one.

Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. A lift diagonal is a workshop dimension as much as a site one. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. The crate spec follows the length of the carry.

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 splashbacks & upstands. 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. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn run. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Ten metres of upstand out of what the tops left. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Spares crated with the batch and labelled by unit.

Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Book-matched pieces are cut adjacent or not at all. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The mitre is cut to the angle we found, not to ninety. The island layout, including whether the ends are mitred down to the floor, needs settling before cutting, since mitred ends are cut in sequence with the top and dry-assembled as one unit. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Recut time comes out of the access window.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A brick pier standing into the run divides it in two, and the join goes against the pier where a clear wall would have needed no join at all. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Upstands leave the bench in lengths, not as one run.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. A recut loses the sequence for good.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Thinner material is specified where the carry demands it.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how uneven the wall is changes which part of the slab a piece is cut from. The template carries the building into the workshop.