Worktop fabrication in Southfields

Yes. Southfields is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW18, SW19. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Handling counts are decided here, not on the pavement. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The boiler has usually been moved out of the main house into the addition, and its flue, its pipework and its condensate all cross the wall the run wants. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. The shell decides the piece; the slab decides only the yield. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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.

A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Edge profiles are finished before the stone is ever stood on end. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Two trips off the van means two chances to catch a corner.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. One setout, eight identical tops. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Yield is what makes batching worth doing at all.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Join count follows the shape, not the metreage. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The mitre is cut to the angle we found, not to ninety. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Join positions belong to whoever signed.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The stairs come down against the wall the addition opens off, so the doorway into the kitchen is offset and the corner beside it is taken by the cupboard under the flight. 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. Walls out of plumb are cut for at the bench.

A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Drawn onto the slab before it is cut.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Mitres are cut as pairs, off one setting.

Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. Where the carry is long the pieces are strapped for handling rather than for the shortest route off the tail lift. Packing takes its cue from the distance to the door.