Worktop fabrication in Mawneys

Yes. Mawneys is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM7. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. 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. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Handling counts are decided here, not on the pavement. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The rear wall is usually a single brick thick and has been rendered, patched and re-rendered, so it bows in and out along the length of the run. 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. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The drawing decides it, not the fitter.

A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Machining happens after the carry length is fixed, not before. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. Two trips off the van means two chances to catch a corner.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Reorderable later, or not specified. 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Six kitchens, one slab run, one colour.

A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The overhang is cut with its support already sized. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Machined to the real line. 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. 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. A provider specification is cut exactly as written.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. An access join is dressed to the same standard as any other.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Edge work on a return matches edge work on a length.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Offcut sizes are decided before the first cut.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. 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. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. The longest piece is capped in the workshop, deliberately.