Worktop fabrication in Pratts Bottom

Yes. Pratts Bottom is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. 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.

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. Islands here regularly run longer than a slab, so the join is nested to sit over an internal gable and positioned so it does not run through the hob cut-out, and on a heavily veined stone we nest the island and the back run together so the movement relates across the room. A century of movement is taken out at the bench. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. A piece too long for the stairs is a piece cut twice. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Straps and battens are chosen for lifting, not just for transit.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. 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. Quartz reorders in five years, a granite block does not. 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. Every flat cut off one drawing, errors included.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. 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. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Yield drops the moment the back edge stops being straight. 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. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The signature on the drawing carries the cost of it.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. Left and right alcove pieces are marked and stay marked.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. Handling points are marked on the crate before it is strapped.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. The workshop cuts to that constraint, so a piece leaves the bench already sized to reach where it is going. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.