Worktop fabrication in Ham

Yes. Ham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW10. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. 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. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. A short window means one pass, so the rack suits one pass. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. These have a back door straight into the kitchen so getting pieces in is rarely the issue, but the room is small and the runs are short, which puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on a single length of stone. Older houses come off the bench with longer scribes. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. 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 plan-angle mitre closes on paper only.

Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Nothing leaves the bench longer than the way in allows. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. The crate spec follows the length of the carry.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. The batch is checked against itself before it leaves. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Ten metres of upstand out of what the tops left.

Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Apron mitres are bonded and polished before dispatch. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The measured wall angle travels to the saw. Final appliance positions and the actual sink and hob need to be settled before machining, because on a run this short a few centimetres of movement decides whether the piece can be cut in one. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Join positions belong to whoever signed.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Doorways are 762mm at best, and the turn from the hall into the kitchen is the pinch point rather than the front door. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. A short piece is cut short on purpose.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. A remake is the price of guessing that measurement.

The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Where the carry is long the pieces are strapped for handling rather than for the shortest route off the tail lift. We pack for the tail lift we are actually going to use.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Seams land over gables, never over a void.