Kitchen worktops made to measure

A worktop is the part of a kitchen you use every day and the one you cannot swap out quietly, so we cut it to the measured size in our own workshop and fit it with the rest of the kitchen. Plastic-faced chipboard, acrylic mineral composite, quartz agglomerate, solid oak or ash, stainless steel: the panel is set, jointed and sealed on site, and the openings for the sink and the hob are cut to the models you have chosen. A depth that is not 600 mm or a run that follows a crooked wall is ordinary work here, not an argument about money.

Most of this work is in Moscow and the near suburbs, in flats and houses where the owners are doing the renovation themselves or alongside a designer. If the kitchen is otherwise sound and only the surface has had its life, we change the top and leave the cabinets alone. We measure, cut and fit that top, and we tell you when a shop-bought panel would serve you better than a made one.

What each surface is, and what it asks of you

Plastic-faced chipboard is where most kitchens start, and most of them should. A 38 mm chipboard panel with high-pressure laminate over it and a moulded edge at the front costs less than anything else on this list, and it takes a knife, a hot pan and a wet cloth without complaint for years. Its weak point is the cut rather than the surface: the opening for a sink saws through that laminate and leaves the board exposed on the sides. That is where water gets in, and it is why the sealant matters more than the make of the panel.

Acrylic mineral composite is what we reach for when the top should run into a window sill or turn up the wall without a visible joint. Two pieces of the same material go together with a colour-matched seam and the line disappears under a pad. A deep front edge is milled from the material rather than glued on, so a 60 mm front does not have an edge banding that can lift later. It scratches where you rest a knife, and a pan straight off a gas burner can leave a mark, and both of those are taken out in the room with an abrasive, without carrying the top away.

Quartz agglomerate is harder and less patient. It does not scratch from a knife and it does not drink oil, but it shows water marks and fine dust the way any hard polished surface does, and the seam between two pieces stays more visible than an acrylic one. Both quartz and acrylic want the cabinet bodies underneath dead level, because stone does not bend to a wall that is out of plumb.

You are not choosing a surface for the day it is fitted. You are choosing what you will do with a hot pan and a wet cloth for the next 10 years.

Solid wood, usually oak or ash, is warm under a rolling pin and repairs in place: a sanding block and a coat of oil bring a tired area back. It moves with the room, so a long run takes a joint that is allowed to breathe, and a leak at the sink joint left through a winter will show. Stainless steel comes out of professional kitchens and belongs where cooking happens rather than where photographs are taken: it takes anything you do to it and shows every fingerprint until it is wiped.

The look of thickness is mostly a decision about the edge. A built-up front on a 38 mm panel reads as a solid slab from across the room, and a small double bevel along the front takes the eye away from the line where two pieces meet. Where the top meets a crooked wall we scribe it and lay a sealant joint, or run an upstand of the same material up the wall if you want a splashback there.

How the work goes, from the measure to the finished top

The measure comes after the room is ready: walls finished, plumbing and electrics at their points, the gas pipe where it is going to stay. Measuring a bare brick room means measuring an intention, and the top arrives cut for the wrong one. We measure the room rather than the drawing, and check the depth at both ends of every run, because a flat is rarely square and a row of cabinets less so.

Before the panel is cut we need four things settled: which sink and which hob, whether the sink sits under the top or through it, what the front edge looks like, and whether the top stops at the sill or runs into the wall. An undermount sink puts a cut edge in a wet place and puts weight on the front edge, so the material and the sink are chosen together instead of one after the other. The opening for the hob is marked against the top that will stand in your kitchen.

What the property decides

A stone top will not forgive bodies that are out of level, so the row of cabinets is set properly and the stone is measured a second time afterwards. A pipe riser in the corner, a radiator under the window, a gas column that cannot be moved: each of these comes off the length you planned and changes where a joint has to fall. A depth of 650 mm, a deeper top at the sink, an island with a hob in it all come off the same bench as a straight row, because the panel is cut here rather than chosen from a rack of stock sizes.

What we need from you before fitting day

Have the sink and the hob on site by fitting day, or tell us they are still on order and we will cut to the dimensions of that model and check them on arrival. Clear a route from the entrance door or the lift to the kitchen, and look at the corner in the hallway before a 4 m panel is carried in. Fitting takes a day for a normal kitchen: the tops go onto levelled bodies, are joined and scribed at the walls, and the sink, the hob and the sealant follow, with the appliances connected on the same visit.

What a worktop costs follows the material and its thickness, the length and how many pieces that length needs, the openings for the sink and the hob, the edge, and whether there is an upstand at the wall. Delivery adds its own share: a fifth floor without a lift is not the same job as a house with a drive. We work the figure out for the particular flat after the measure, and if a standard panel would serve you better than a made one, we quote the smaller job and say why.