Worktop fabrication in Parsons Green

Yes. Parsons Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load sheet carries the parking note with it. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A villa cut into flats leaves kitchens in rooms that were never kitchens, with services run to wherever they could physically be made to reach. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. The bow in an old wall is cut for, not sanded out. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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 plan-angle mitre closes on paper only.

Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Nothing leaves the bench longer than the way in allows. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. Straps and battens are chosen for lifting, not just for transit.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Quartz reorders in five years, a granite block does not. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Every flat cut off one drawing, errors included.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. The overhang is cut with its support already sized. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The measured wall angle travels to 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. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Nothing is cut before the signature comes back.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. The flat entrance door and the internal doorways are usually tighter than the communal stairs, which is the opposite of what most people assume. Joins land over a cabinet gable and clear of every cut-out, because the alternative is a bridge of stone that will not survive the carry. A scribe of twenty millimetres is machined, not fettled on site.

If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. The spares are cut while the slab is still open.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Cornice, picture rails and deep skirting survive in converted rooms, so the run stands off the wall and the back edge follows the units rather than the plaster. A scribed end into an alcove is cut long on the bench and eased back on site, since the alcove is never the same width top and bottom. Older houses come off the bench with longer scribes.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Edge work on a return matches edge work on a length.