Worktop fabrication in Morden Park

Yes. Morden Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM4. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Ceilings in the addition are lower than in the front rooms, so the band of wall between the worktop and the wall units is shorter than the rest of the house suggests. The other constraint is the hall: a piece has to come through the front door, round the newel at the foot of the stairs and through a doorway into the back kitchen, so we size the pieces to the tightest turn on that route before we nest anything, which sometimes means splitting a run that would otherwise have gone in whole. What the wall does is on the drawing before the saw runs. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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 notch is machined, never ground in later.

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. An access join is dressed to the same standard as any other. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. 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. Reorderable later, or not specified. 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. Six kitchens, one slab run, one colour.

An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Every piece is labelled to its place in the run. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. A plan-angle mitre closes on paper only. 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. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. A landlord repeating a kitchen gets the same detail cut.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. 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. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Undermount cut-outs are polished before anything leaves.

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. Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Short pieces cost bench time, not slab area.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. Every piece is drawn onto the slab before anything is cut, so the veining and the join positions are decided together rather than one after the other. The overhang is cut with its support already sized.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The meters sit in the hall or under the stairs on the way through, so the carry passes a cupboard door that has to be shut and protected before anything moves. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. The piece is made for the room the builders left.