Worktop fabrication in Tolworth

Yes. Tolworth is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT6. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Kingston upon Thames. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. Kerbside unloading is planned in the racking, not improvised at the door. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. These have a back door straight into the kitchen so getting pieces in is rarely the issue, but the room is small and the runs are short, which puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on a single length of stone. Walls out of plumb are cut for at the bench. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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 measured wall angle travels to the saw.

A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Nesting follows the route, not the other way round. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. The load plan follows from it.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. 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. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. The annexe top comes off the main kitchen slab.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Mitres are cut as pairs, off one setting. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Yield drops the moment the back edge stops being straight. Final appliance positions and the actual sink and hob need to be settled before machining, because on a run this short a few centimetres of movement decides whether the piece can be cut in one. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Whoever holds the budget sees the drawing first.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Floors have usually settled towards the rear, so levelling means packing the units before the stone beds down. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. The offcut is planned before the main piece is cut.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Blankets on the walls and a board on the floor go in before the first piece, because a scratched car becomes a bill from the managing agent long after the kitchen is finished. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The crate is built to the same measurement.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Units are often only 500mm deep, so a standard 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors need checking against it. Pieces are cut, mitred, machined and dry-assembled on the bench before anything is loaded onto a van. Two slabs get sequenced when one will not cover the run.

What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. The kitchen is at the front or the back depending on the plan, and which it is decides whether there is a rear door on the route at all. The bench work is about keeping enough solid material between them - a hob cut-out too near a sink cut-out leaves a narrow bridge that will not survive being lifted, so we either move the appliance positions on the template or split the run and put a join over a gable between the two cut-outs. Thin partitions get shallower overhangs, decided in the shop.