Worktop fabrication in West Barnes

Yes. West Barnes is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW20, KT3. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load plan follows from it. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Downstairs the hall and dining room are boarded but the kitchen was laid solid from the start, so the room sits on a different construction from the one beside it. What does drive the bench work is the knocked-through kitchen-diner: the return worktop and any peninsula are seen end-on from the dining side, so we nest the pieces so the veining carries across the internal corner in the same direction rather than turning through ninety degrees. A scribe of twenty millimetres is machined, not fettled on site. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. A deep relief needs material left behind it.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The maximum piece is written on the drawing in millimetres. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop installation first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Small kitchens are more bench work per square metre. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Cut for the slot, because the slot will not move.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The corner is proven on the bench first. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The notch is machined, never ground in later. 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. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. A provider specification is cut exactly as written.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. A serving hatch through to the dining room is common, and closing one up leaves a panel of newer wall exactly where the run passes. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Slab yield falls when the runs stop being straight.

A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Nesting follows the route, not the other way round.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. That is the last thing settled before dispatch.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. The crate is built to the same measurement.