Worktop fabrication in Wandsworth Town

Yes. Wandsworth Town is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW18. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. What comes off first is settled before the doors shut. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Sprinkler heads and extract ducts are coordinated into the ceiling, so an extractor over an island goes where the services already allow. We work to the internal depth of the car and the diagonal you can actually stand a piece up on with the doors closed, then nest to that, which routinely turns a two-piece kitchen into a three-piece one with an extra join over a gable. Every join over a gable, clear of every cut-out. Stud centres are almost never where the brackets would like to be, so fixing positions get set from the framing and the stone is designed to suit. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Nothing leaves the bench expecting a square wall.

The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. 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. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. The load sheet carries the parking note with it.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. 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. Small kitchens are more bench work per square metre. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Cut for the slot, because the slot will not move.

Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Undersides are polished where the piece is seen from below. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A partition that gives when you lean on it will give under someone sitting at an overhang, and a bonded mitre nearby is where that movement shows first. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. Sink, tap and hob need to be with us before machining, along with confirmation of whether the island is getting a breakfast overhang, since anything past roughly 300mm unsupported needs steel let into the carcasses and that has to be built in, not added later. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. One batch wherever the specification repeats.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. A piece is cut to the turn it has to clear.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The drawing decides it, not the fitter.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Plasterboard partitions mean light scribes and clean joins, and the fabrication effort moves to the visible faces instead. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Real dimensions go on the cut list, not nominal ones.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw.