Worktop fabrication in Sanderstead

Yes. Sanderstead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR2. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. A booked slot dictates the order the frame is filled in. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The boiler has usually been moved out to the garage or the utility, leaving a capped flue and a run of dead pipework in the kitchen wall. 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. Nested to the route first and the slab second. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Left and right alcove pieces are marked and stay marked.

Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Handling points are marked on the crate before it is strapped. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. The yard reads the access note before it racks anything.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. One kept offcut saves a whole flat later. 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. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Repeat runs come off a jig, not a fresh setout.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Offcut sizes are decided before the first cut. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. A relief that deep changes how the piece is lifted. 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. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Appliance changes after nesting are a new piece.

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. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Air bricks that once ventilated the original floor now open into the extension, and one of them is generally sitting behind a base unit. What does drive the bench work is the knocked-through kitchen-diner: the return worktop and any peninsula are seen end-on from the dining side, so we nest the pieces so the veining carries across the internal corner in the same direction rather than turning through ninety degrees. The saw follows the template, never the plan.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. 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.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. 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. Repeat pieces are cut from one drawing set, so what arrives on the bench is the same every time. One setout, eight identical tops.