Worktop fabrication in Woodford Green

Yes. Woodford Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG8. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. That is the last thing settled before dispatch. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

A large villa has wide doors, a generous hall and somewhere to park, so the joins that go in are chosen for layout rather than forced by the route. 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. Thin partitions get shallower overhangs, decided in the shop. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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 notch is machined, never ground in later.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The crate is built to the same measurement. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. Loaded for the carry, not for the van.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. 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. Ten metres of upstand out of what the tops left. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Spares crated with the batch and labelled by unit.

It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. 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. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. A plan-angle mitre closes on paper only. 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. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Two names on a drawing, one of them decides.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. The corner is proven on the bench first.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. Every piece is drawn onto the slab before anything is cut, so the veining and the join positions are decided together rather than one after the other. Yield is worked on the slab, not on a calculator.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. These kitchens are big rooms with long perimeter runs and an island, so level has to hold across the whole floor rather than along one wall. Islands here regularly run longer than a slab, so the join is nested to sit over an internal gable and positioned so it does not run through the hob cut-out, and on a heavily veined stone we nest the island and the back run together so the movement relates across the room. The template carries the building into the workshop.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. 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. 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.