Worktop fabrication in Hampton Hill

Yes. Hampton Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW12. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

A flat over a shop is reached by a separate street door and a straight steep stair, and that stair is the whole access question. 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. The saw follows the template, never the plan. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Geometry first, then the saw.

Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The longest piece is capped in the workshop, deliberately. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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 really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Nested for the job in front of us. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. One drawing set, every unit.

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. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The return is nested first, because it fits worst. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. A square internal corner is a crack waiting. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The signature on the drawing carries the cost of it.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Units are often only 500mm deep, so a standard 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors need checking against it. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Nothing is machined until the drawing matches the building.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Veining is matched across the seam before cutting starts.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. We pack for the tail lift we are actually going to use.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Nothing leaves the bench longer than the way in allows.