Worktop fabrication in Rotherhithe

Yes. Rotherhithe is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE16. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. A booked slot dictates the order the frame is filled in. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

There is no back addition on these, so the kitchen is the original rear room and the run is one wall long with a door at each end of it. 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. What leaves the bench is what fits the room. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins.

Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The maximum piece is written on the drawing in millimetres. 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. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. The yard reads the access note before it racks anything.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Every flat cut off one drawing, errors included. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. The spares are cut while the slab is still open.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Every piece is labelled to its place in the run. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The drawing decides it, not the fitter. 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 ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. One approval, one cut, one delivery.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. That rear wall carries the back door and the only window, which leaves very little uninterrupted length for a sink run. 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.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Short pieces cost bench time, not slab area.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. Every piece is drawn onto the slab before anything is cut, so the veining and the join positions are decided together rather than one after the other. The overhang is cut with its support already sized.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Many have had the ground floor chimney breast removed to gain three hundred millimetres, and the gained strip is newer blockwork standing proud of the old plaster. 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.