Worktop fabrication in Slade Green

Yes. Slade Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA8. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. 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.

Edwardian terraces are wider and taller than the Victorian houses next to them, so the kitchen usually takes a full-width rear room rather than a narrow outrigger. The other constraint is the hall: a piece has to come through the front door, round the newel at the foot of the stairs and through a doorway into the back kitchen, so we size the pieces to the tightest turn on that route before we nest anything, which sometimes means splitting a run that would otherwise have gone in whole. Every join over a gable, clear of every cut-out. Easy parking, but these houses sit on soft ground and the floors move, always recheck the units are level before templating.

Level throughout with wide estate roads and generally free parking, but the area is hemmed in by the railway and the marshes so there are few routes in and satnav often sends vans the long way round. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. 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. Nested for the job in front of us. 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. Same slab run, or it is not a match.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. The sink and hob need to be on site and the run layout fixed before we start cutting, because moving a hob after the join position is set means recutting the whole piece. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The approved drawing is the instruction.