Worktop fabrication in Hook

Yes. Hook is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT9. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Kingston upon Thames. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. We pack for the tail lift we are actually going to use. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These were built with generous room sizes for their date, so a peninsula fits where a speculative house of the same age would not take one. The kitchen is usually a small square or L-shaped room reached through a narrow entrance lobby and a standard internal doorway, so the limit on piece length is the turn out of the lobby, and short runs mean joins are often avoidable altogether if the layout is nested tightly. Older houses come off the bench with longer scribes. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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.

The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. A piece is cut to the turn it has to clear. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. A long walk from the van earns heavier corner protection.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Proven on the bench before dispatch.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. 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. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. A square internal corner is a crack waiting. The stack boxing needs to be in its final form and the sink and hob on site before we machine, since a boxing that gets re-clad afterwards throws the notch out. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. A provider specification is cut exactly as written.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The kitchen was laid out to a nineteen-sixties module, so the units in it are often 500 or 550 deep and a modern carcass does not land on the same line. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. The saw only ever sees the templated dimensions.

Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. A minority of these are non-traditional precast types, and in those the inside face of the outer wall is a panel between columns rather than a masonry wall. Walls in the system-built blocks are concrete or panel and can bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and we cut the back edge to follow it rather than trimming on site with a grinder. The fall across the floor is in the cut list.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. No money is taken before the template happens. A cylinder cupboard or a drying cupboard opens off the kitchen, taking a corner out of the run and giving nothing back. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. A piece that needs trimming later was drawn wrong.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Seams land over gables, never over a void.