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. 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. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to 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. The bench work is about keeping enough solid material between them - a hob cut-out too near a sink cut-out leaves a narrow bridge that will not survive being lifted, so we either move the appliance positions on the template or split the run and put a join over a gable between the two cut-outs. The bench proves it before the van moves. The estate houses have thin partition walls and lightweight carcasses, so weight matters - 20mm quartz or porcelain rather than 30mm granite.

Estate roads with communal parking courts set back from the houses so the carry is 20 to 30 metres, and pedestrian-only paths between blocks that a trolley handles but a van cannot follow. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Once the cut-outs are machined there is no going back on it.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Proven on the bench before dispatch. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Nested for the job in front of us.

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. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Dry-assembled before it leaves.