Worktop fabrication in North Cray

Yes. North Cray is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Two trips off the van means two chances to catch a corner. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The floor is often flags or brick laid straight on the ground, so it is solid, uneven and not going to be levelled by chasing into it. Access is off a drive and through wide doors, so for once the piece size is not the constraint - the joins that go in are the ones we choose for layout and veining, not the ones the building forces. Thin partitions get shallower overhangs, decided in the shop. Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. A notch and a cut-out never share the same span.

Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Thinner material is specified where the carry demands it. 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. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. Packing takes its cue from the distance to the door.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop installation first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. A batch split across two weeks stops being a batch. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Matched means the same block, not the same name.

The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Offcut sizes are decided before the first cut. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A brick pier standing into the run divides it in two, and the join goes against the pier where a clear wall would have needed no join at all. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The casing gets plotted. The steel inside it does not. The range or Aga, the sink and the tap all need to be confirmed by model before nesting, because their clearances and hole positions set where the island can be cut. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. One batch wherever the specification repeats.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Undersides are polished where the piece is seen from below.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. 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 the carry is long the pieces are strapped for handling rather than for the shortest route off the tail lift. What comes off first is settled before the doors shut.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Where the structure cannot be cut into, the stone is relieved instead, and a relief that deep changes both the yield off the slab and how the piece is handled. 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 piece is nested around the scribe, not despite it.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. A join added for access is placed over a gable, never mid-span.