Worktops in Shad Thames

Yes. Shad Thames is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Whatever the standing allows, the stone leaves that van finished, because every edge, cut-out and internal radius is machined at the works and none of it is open to reconsideration at the kerb. Stone arrives finished, because a kerb is not a polishing shop. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Steel columns and downstands land where the frame put them, which is frequently in the middle of what would otherwise be a clean run. A surface in a volume this size is read from across the floor, so it registers as a tone long before anybody is close enough to read a pattern in it. Cool artificial light turns a warm stone grey. 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. Every notch and every scribe is machined into the piece before it leaves the works, and a hard sintered surface is the least forgiving of a tight internal corner, so one is always cut with a generous radius. The narrowest return in the kitchen is its weakest stone.

Blankets on the walls and a board on the floor go in before the first piece, because a scratched car becomes a bill from the managing agent long after the kitchen is finished. That caps the longest piece, and a run split into two lengths nests differently on the slab, which moves the yield and moves the figure with it. Thinner stone carries easily and asks for continuous support. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. A granite kitchen ends its day with a sealer, and a sealer wants a dry face and a quiet hour afterwards, so that hour is written into the day rather than borrowed from it. A natural surface is sealed at the end of its own fitting day.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Where several kitchens are ordered together the sensible move is to take them all off one batch, because two slabs of the same name bought six months apart will not sit happily in the same building. Where the cooking is serious, heat tolerance leads the list. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. Volume work tends to live at the entry end of the range, and the entry end is genuine stone rather than a compromise, since the lowest supply figure we quote is a sintered surface and not a thin laminate pretending to be one. Order the stone against the room, never against the drawing.

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. A shape like that nests kindly on a slab, so more of what gets bought ends up on the units and the rate per square metre behaves much as the brochure says it will. The number follows the layout far more closely than the floor plan. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

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. A hob dropped into the middle of a length puts sustained warmth at the lip of a cut-out, and an engineered surface will yellow there across ten years where a natural one takes it without comment. Porous or sealed is a decision about the next ten years. Send the island size and the perimeter lengths, tell us the ceiling and window arrangement, and say whether the pod services come up through the floor. Where the owner is not local, the decisions happen remotely, so photographs and a clear itemised drawing carry more weight than a showroom visit ever would. That changes which questions are worth asking about the stone, because somebody staying put wants to know how a honed face marks in five years and somebody selling wants to know how it photographs next spring. A surface nobody maintains should not need maintaining.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. An island is the piece that decides whether one slab covers the kitchen or two, and a second slab arrives as a step in the figure rather than a gentle slope. A clean nest on the slab is the cheapest thing a shape can do.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. The goods lift is generous and the flat entrance often is not, so the tightest point on the route is inside the flat rather than in the building. The kitchen is usually an island pod standing free, which puts all four edges on show and turns the profile into a design decision rather than a technical one. Open-plan surfaces are furniture before they are work surfaces.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. 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. A run that sits under strong sun for hours every afternoon suits a surface built to be stable in daylight, because a resin-bound stone is made for indoor use and sustained sunlight is the one thing it was never designed around. A short upstand shows a fragment of pattern, never a run of it.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Quartz is the sensible default where a kitchen changes hands often, because there is nothing to seal, nothing to re-seal and nothing an incoming household has to be told about the surface. Several kitchens at once should come off a single batch.