Worktop fabrication in New Cross Gate

Yes. New Cross Gate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. 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. Packing takes its cue from the distance to the door. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A service duct runs between the kitchen and the bathroom stacked above it, and access to that duct stays open whatever the layout does. 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. A wall that leans is machined to the lean. 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. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Machined to the real line.

A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The cut list answers to the way in first. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. What comes off first is settled before the doors shut.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. The spares are cut while the slab is still open. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. One kept offcut saves a whole flat later.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Edge work on a return matches edge work on a length. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Cut oversize on purpose, every time. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Slabs for a programme are pulled together, not weekly.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. The relief comes out of the slab, not the fitter.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. The lift is only part of the route, and the corridor from the lobby to the flat door often holds a tighter turn than the car does. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. A piece too long for the stairs is a piece cut twice.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. 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. Offcut sizes are decided before the first cut.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Communal heating pipework rises through the flat and is boxed in at floor and at ceiling, and none of it moves for a kitchen. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Proven on the bench, then loaded.