Services
Fabrication in our own workshop
Your slab is cut, mitred, polished and dry-assembled in our own workshop, with your sink and hob dry-fitted on the bench before a single piece is loaded onto the van.
The slab is laid out before it is cut
The template drawing arrives in the workshop and becomes a cutting plan drawn onto your actual slab. That step is called nesting, and it decides more about how the finished kitchen looks than the colour did. On a marble-effect quartz or a granite with real movement, nesting is what determines whether a vein runs across a join or stops dead at it.
Then the kitchen is built on the bench before it is built in your house. Runs are laid out together, joins pulled up tight, the sink dropped in and the hob offered up. Anything wrong is found there, where it costs an hour and a new cut, rather than in your kitchen where it costs a day, a slab and a fitting date.
Everything is machined to the template drawing, not to the plan and not to a tape measure taken on the day. This is the whole reason templating happens after the units are in.
At a glance
- Where
- Our own workshop
- Cut to
- The signed-off template drawing
- Dry-fitted
- Sink and hob, before dispatch
- Finished joins
- Typically 2–3mm, sanded flush
Fitted 3–7 working days from template. Deposit at template, balance before installation.
What is involved
What happens between template and fitting day
Six operations, and all of them happen before your 3 to 7 working days are up.
- 01Layout
Nesting the pieces on your slab
Your runs are positioned on the slab so the pattern falls where you want it. On materials with directional movement we lay pieces out so the vein continues through a join wherever the template allows it.
- 02Machine
Cutting to the template drawing
Runs, returns, islands and all apertures cut from the digital template. Every dimension traces back to the room, not to a measurement anyone wrote down twice.
- 03Bench
Mitring and edge work
A mitred edge builds a thick, solid-looking edge out of a thinner slab by cutting two pieces at forty-five degrees and bonding them. Done properly the joint disappears into the corner. Done badly it is a dark line down the front of your kitchen.
- 04Machine
Cut-outs, drainer grooves and holes
Sink aperture, tap holes, hob, sockets and any drainer grooves, each machined to the physical item you supplied at template.
- 05Quality check
Dry assembly and dry-fitting
The kitchen is assembled on the bench, joins pulled up, and your sink and hob dropped into their apertures to prove the fit before anything leaves the building.
- 06Dispatch
Final polish, protect and load
Exposed edges and arrises polished to match the factory face, everything checked over, then protected and labelled by run for the fitting team.
Joins
Why the joins go where they go
This is the single most common thing customers are unhappy about, almost always because nobody explained it to them beforehand.
Long runs need a join. There is no way round it
Slabs are manufactured and quarried in fixed sizes. A four metre run is not one piece of stone in any material we sell, at any price. Anyone implying otherwise is describing a kitchen they are not going to fit.
A join needs a cabinet underneath it
We place joins over a unit gable so there is something structural directly beneath. A join spanning an unsupported gap is the point the worktop will eventually fail at, which is why we will not put one there to save a cut.
Never through a cut-out
A join running through a sink or hob aperture is the weakest geometry in the whole worktop. On a corner run we would rather bring the join to the internal corner, where the eye reads it as part of the shape of the room.
Two to three millimetres, sanded flush
A finished join is typically two to three millimetres wide, filled with a colour-matched adhesive, then sanded and polished flush so you feel nothing at all when you run a hand across it.
It will be visible if you look for it
In quartz, granite or sintered stone, an invisible join does not exist. What we control is where you have to look. Anybody promising you an invisible join is promising something the material does not do.
You agree the positions before we cut
Join positions are shown to you and signed off at template. They are not decided in the workshop and revealed on fitting day.
The workshop stage
What we control, and what the stone decides
Being honest about the second column is what stops a disappointing handover.
What we do at this stage
- Lay out your pieces on the slab for pattern and vein before cutting
- Machine every cut-out to the physical sink, tap and hob you supplied
- Mitre and polish exposed edges and arrises so nothing is left sharp
- Dry-assemble the runs and dry-fit the sink and hob on the bench
- Cut upstands and splashbacks from the same slab run, if they were ordered with the worktop
- Protect and label each piece by run so fitting day is not a puzzle
What cannot be changed here
- Once a slab is cut, it is cut: a specification change after template means new material
- Natural granite varies from slab to slab, so no two kitchens are identical even in the same colour
- Engineered surfaces vary between manufacturing batches, which is why matching pieces are cut together
- We do not modify the stone on site beyond scribing and fine-fitting on fitting day
Questions
Fabrication: the questions we get asked
If yours is not here, ring and ask. You will get a straight answer rather than a call-back from a salesperson.
Can you make the joins invisible?
No, and nobody can. A well-made join in stone is two to three millimetres, filled with colour-matched adhesive and sanded flush so it is smooth to the touch. What we do is place it where you are not looking and agree that position with you at template.
How many joins will my kitchen have?
It depends on your run lengths and the slab size of the material you chose. We give you the likely number at quotation and confirm the exact positions with you during the template visit.
Can the pattern be matched across a join?
On materials with directional veining, usually yes. Your pieces are laid out on the slab so the vein continues through the join wherever the template geometry allows. On heavily patterned granite there is a limit to how far it can be carried, and we will tell you where that limit is.
Why dry-assemble it in the workshop first?
Because it moves the surprise from your kitchen to our bench. A cut-out a couple of millimetres tight is a fifteen minute fix in the workshop. Discovered on fitting day it costs everybody a day and possibly a slab.
Where this happens
Fabrication in your part of London
Twelve neighbourhoods whose housing stock throws up this job most often. Each page covers what fabrication actually involves in that stock: the access, the era of the building and what that does to the work.
These twelve are a sample, not a coverage boundary. We work in 723 Greater London neighbourhoods and out into Surrey, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Essex.
Next
What usually happens either side of this
Every job runs through more than one of these. Follow the thread rather than guessing which order things go in.
Next step
Send us the kitchen and we will price it properly
Plans, a sketch or photographs with rough run lengths is enough to start. Nothing is payable until we template.