Worktop fabrication in Oval

Yes. Oval is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE11. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The crate spec follows the length of the carry. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Cornice runs round the head of the wall, so the wall units stop under it and the splashback band is trapped between two things that are not going to move. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. The bow in an old wall is cut for, not sanded out. 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 template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. The relief comes out of the slab, not the fitter.

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. A join added for access is placed over a gable, never mid-span. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. We pack for the tail lift we are actually going to use.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Quartz reorders in five years, a granite block does not. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Every flat cut off one drawing, errors included.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The saw follows the nest, not the floor plan. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Geometry first, then the saw. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Late changes are priced rather than absorbed quietly.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The drawing states a maximum length and the shop honours it.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Book-matched pieces are cut adjacent or not at all.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. A square internal corner is a crack waiting.

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. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. The chimney breast is usually still standing with the opening blocked up, and the alcoves either side of it are rarely the same width as each other. 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. A scribe of twenty millimetres is machined, not fettled on site.