Worktop fabrication in Tooting Graveney

Yes. Tooting Graveney is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW17. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Kerbside unloading is planned in the racking, not improvised at the door. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

An inter-war terrace is wider than a Victorian one and shallower than a semi, so the kitchen is a compact square room rather than a galley. Most of these have a side passage and a back door, so a full-length piece can usually reach the kitchen without being cut down, and the piece sizing is driven by the slab rather than the route. Older houses come off the bench with longer scribes. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Upstands leave the bench in lengths, not as one run.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Thinner material is specified where the carry demands it. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. The load plan follows from it.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. The annexe top comes off the main kitchen slab. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Small kitchens are more bench work per square metre.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Short pieces cost bench time, not slab area. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Radius first, polish second, joins nowhere near. The peninsula end detail needs deciding up front - square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall - because a waterfall end has to be cut in sequence off the same part of the slab as the top. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. 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.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. A notch and a cut-out never share the same span.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. The overhang is cut with its support already sized.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. There is usually a shared rear alley, and whether the gate onto it is unlocked decides whether long pieces come in from the back. Where a full length can come down the side and in at the back, the nest follows the slab instead of the building. The fall across the floor is in the cut list.

Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Ceilings are lath and plaster at the front and plasterboard in the extension, and the join between the two marks where the original back wall stood. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Vein direction is chosen across the joins, not within a piece.