Worktop fabrication in Streatham Common

Yes. Streatham Common is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW16. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. That is the last thing settled before dispatch. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Internal walls are lath on timber studs while the flank walls are brick, so two walls in the same kitchen take a fixing completely differently. 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. Where the floor drops away the front edge is cut to suit. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. The mitre is cut to the angle we found, not to ninety.

A step up off the pavement means the piece is lifted to the threshold before it is carried anywhere, and that first lift is the one that wants four hands. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. A piece is cut to the turn it has to clear. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Loaded for the carry, not for the van.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. 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. Yield is what makes batching worth doing at all. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Short runs waste more slab than long ones do.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. 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 sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Upstands leave the bench in lengths, not as one run. 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. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Dry-assembled before it leaves.

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. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Cut to the room, not to a rectangle.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. 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 cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Dry-assembled to the shape of your run.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Where the carry is long the pieces are strapped for handling rather than for the shortest route off the tail lift. The strapping answers to the walk, not the drive.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. 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. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Radius first, polish second, joins nowhere near.