Worktop fabrication in Shooters Hill

Yes. Shooters Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE18. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. 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. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. Islands here regularly run longer than a slab, so the join is nested to sit over an internal gable and positioned so it does not run through the hob cut-out, and on a heavily veined stone we nest the island and the back run together so the movement relates across the room. The piece is made for the room the builders left. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. A relief that deep changes how the piece is lifted.

A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop installation first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Repeat runs come off a jig, not a fresh setout.

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. 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 is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Cut to the plotted line, not the nominal one. The range or Aga, the sink and the tap all need to be confirmed by model before nesting, because their clearances and hole positions set where the island can be cut. 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. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. A repeated specification comes off one batch.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Original solid floors are quarry tile or flagstone bedded on ash, and they have moved with the ground rather than with the building. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Real dimensions go on the cut list, not nominal ones.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. A curved bay or a canted corner turns up more often here than people expect, and a curve is templated and cut, never bent. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. Yield is worked out against the run lengths the house allows.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. 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.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. It is settled on the bench, not on site.