Worktop fabrication in Tulse Hill

Yes. Tulse Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW2. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Loaded for the carry, not for the van. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

There is a door to the garden, a door to the hall and often a door to a utility, so the perimeter run is interrupted three times. Access is off a drive and through wide doors, so for once the piece size is not the constraint - the joins that go in are the ones we choose for layout and veining, not the ones the building forces. Lath and plaster is cut for, never cut into. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Cut oversize on purpose, every time.

A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The crate is built to the same measurement. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. The strapping answers to the walk, not the drive.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. The annexe top comes off the main kitchen slab. 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. Small kitchens are more bench work per square metre.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. 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.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The relief comes out of the slab, not the fitter. The range or Aga, the sink and the tap all need to be confirmed by model before nesting, because their clearances and hole positions set where the island can be cut. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. The bench proves the fit before the van is loaded.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Retrofitted underfloor heating goes into the new part of the floor and stops at the old part, so the build-up changes partway across the room. 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.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. The workshop cuts to the plotted line rather than to a nominal dimension, which is why a scribe edge leaves the bench deliberately oversize. Geometry first, then the saw.

A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. 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 corner is proven on the bench first.

Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. A piece is cut to the turn it has to clear.