Worktop fabrication in Middle Park

Yes. Middle Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE9. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

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. 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. The fall across the floor is in the cut list. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. The casing gets plotted. The steel inside it does not.

There is no leaning a piece against a wall halfway up, so any flight longer than a dozen treads is planned around a rest point on a landing. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Load order is set by the order the pieces will be carried. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop replacement ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Quartz reorders in five years, a granite block does not. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Every flat cut off one drawing, errors included.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. The overhang is cut with its support already sized. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The piece is nested around the scribe, not despite it. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. A provider specification is cut exactly as written.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. Repeat pieces are cut from one drawing set, so what arrives on the bench is the same every time. The spares are cut while the slab is still open.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. 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. A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Edge work on a return matches edge work on a length.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. The original plan had one sink position, and moving it means taking a waste through a wall that does not want to be cut. 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.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Windows and doors were replaced across whole streets on one programme, so the kitchen window is a plastic frame in the old opening with a deep lined reveal. 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. What the wall does is on the drawing before the saw runs.