Worktop fabrication in Raynes Park

Yes. Raynes Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW20. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. 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 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. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. Most of these have a side passage and a back door, so a full-length piece can usually reach the kitchen without being cut down, and the piece sizing is driven by the slab rather than the route. The saw follows the template, never the plan. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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 drawing decides it, not the fitter.

A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. A remake is the price of guessing that measurement. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Every flat cut off one drawing, errors included. 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. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. The spares are cut while the slab is still open.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. One setting serves both halves of a mitre. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Machined to the real line. The peninsula end detail needs deciding up front - square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall - because a waterfall end has to be cut in sequence off the same part of the slab as the top. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. 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.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Two runs and a return into a rear extension is the pattern, and the return is the piece that never nests neatly on a slab. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Yield is worked out against the run lengths the house allows.

Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. Where the carry is long the pieces are strapped for handling rather than for the shortest route off the tail lift. A booked slot dictates the order the frame is filled in.

Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Repeat pieces are cut from one drawing set, so what arrives on the bench is the same every time. One kept offcut saves a whole flat later.