Worktop fabrication in New Addington

Yes. New Addington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load plan follows from it. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. The bench work is about keeping enough solid material between them - a hob cut-out too near a sink cut-out leaves a narrow bridge that will not survive being lifted, so we either move the appliance positions on the template or split the run and put a join over a gable between the two cut-outs. Settled on the drawing, cut once. Because the house types repeat across the whole estate, once you have templated one kitchen you know the run length on the next, but you still template every one because previous owners have moved the back door.

Wide estate roads, grass verges you must not drive on, and long shared paths serving several front doors. Maisonettes have external stairs with a handrail that limits how you can swing a piece. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Proven on the bench before dispatch. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Nested for the job in front of us.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Every join sits over a gable. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. Final appliance positions and the actual sink and hob need to be settled before machining, because on a run this short a few centimetres of movement decides whether the piece can be cut in one. 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. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak.