Worktop fabrication in Keston

Yes. Keston is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR2. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. A long walk from the van earns heavier corner protection. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

These have been added to over two centuries, so the kitchen is made of two or three walls of different ages and different thicknesses. Access is off a drive and through wide doors, so for once the piece size is not the constraint - the joins that go in are the ones we choose for layout and veining, not the ones the building forces. A settled corner leaves the bench as a real angle. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Upstands leave the bench in lengths, not as one run.

A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. A join added for access is placed over a gable, never mid-span. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. The frame is filled back to front when the bay is booked short.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. 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. Nested for the job in front of us. 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. One drawing set, every unit.

A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink does. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The saw follows the nest, not the floor plan. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Radius first, polish second, joins nowhere near. The range or Aga, the sink and the tap all need to be confirmed by model before nesting, because their clearances and hole positions set where the island can be cut. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Dry-assembled before it leaves.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. A notch and a cut-out never share the same span.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The drawing states a maximum length and the shop honours it.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Book-matched pieces are cut adjacent or not at all.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. A steel goes in where the original back wall came out, and the ceiling steps down under it at the point the run passes beneath. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. The drawing decides it before the saw does.