Worktop fabrication in Shirley

Yes. Shirley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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.

Everything on one level means no stairs, no landings and no turns, which is about the easiest carry there is in domestic work. 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. Where the floor drops away the front edge is cut to suit. 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. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Cut oversize on purpose, every time.

Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Load order is set by the order the pieces will be carried. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is 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. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. One kept offcut saves a whole flat later. 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. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Repeat runs come off a jig, not a fresh setout.

A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink does. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Offcut sizes are decided before the first cut. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

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. The relief comes out of the slab, not the fitter. 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 living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. Geometry first, then the saw.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Bungalow kitchens are frequently extended into the rear or opened into the roof space, so the room is part original and part new build. Where a full length can come down the side and in at the back, the nest follows the slab instead of the building. What the shell demands is solved in the shop, not the kitchen.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Undersides are polished where the piece is seen from below.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. 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. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw.