Worktop fabrication in Hampton Wick

Yes. Hampton Wick is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT1. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. 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. 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. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The staircase rises over the back room in a good number of these, so a sloping bulkhead sits over one end of the run and a piece cannot be stood on edge beneath it. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. Cut-outs are placed where the fabric will take them. 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. 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.

Where the turn inside is tight the piece gets turned on the path and brought in already on edge, which needs room in front of the door as well as behind it. 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. 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 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, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. The batch is checked against itself before it leaves. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Ten metres of upstand out of what the tops left.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. A recut loses the sequence for good. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. The sink and hob need to be on site and the run layout fixed before we start cutting, because moving a hob after the join position is set means recutting the whole piece. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Every piece is labelled to its place in the run.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Polishing a piece that cannot reach the room wastes a day.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Oversize on the scribe edge, always.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Repeat pieces are cut from one drawing set, so what arrives on the bench is the same every time. Spares crated with the batch and labelled by unit.