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. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. The load plan follows from it. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen is usually a rear room extended into the garden, with the original external wall now standing inside the run. 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 bench proves it before the van moves. Split-level rear extensions mean two worktop heights in one room, and clients often want a continuous stone look across the step, which has to be resolved as two separate runs with a deliberate break.

Hilly roads with steep, often curved driveways and split-level frontages, so getting close to the door is fine but the last few metres involve a slope or a set of steps. 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. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Once the cut-outs are machined there is no going back on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop design & quotation. Same template visit, same workshop, 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Proven on the bench before dispatch. 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. Nested for the job in front of us.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Every join sits over a gable. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. 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. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. Dry-assembled before it leaves.