STONE BENCHTOP DESIGN & MANUFACTURING
Design Considerations
Now that you’ve decided stone benchtops are the right product for your next project it’s time to look into the finer details.
Generally engineered (man-made) stone comes in one of two sizes 3000mm x 1400mm or 3200mm x 1600mm +/-50mm. They are also very heavy, 20mm engineered stone weighs approximately 50kg/m2 or 250kg/slab. Natural stone comes in varying sizes, generally 2800mm -3200mm x 1700mm – 2100mm
Engineered and Natural stone slabs come in a variety of different finishes, polished, honed, concrete, matt and rough to name a few. It is important to know at the design stage that some textured finishes can meant that your new stone benchtops will require a little more regular thorough cleaning.
Please take time to consider the access to your kitchen, if there tight corners or stairs that we will need to be navigate to get a large benchtop through to your kitchen, you might need to be open to having a join in your stone benchtop for us to gain access if things are tight. Site joins are unavoidable in most kitchen benchtop designs, and while our installers are great a matching glue colours to the colour of your benchtop, site joins are not invisible.
Most brands of engineered stone warrant a maximum unsupported over hang on a breakfast bar of 300mm, if you would like to have a larger overhang consider adding extra support that can be integrated into your design.
With our CNC we are open to quite a few options in the way of cutouts and edge profiles. Cutouts are not limited to just top mount and undermount sinks or hotplates, we can also make flushmount cutouts, drainer grooves and recessed drainer boards to name a few.
Our CNC also gives us the ability to fabricate specialty edge profiles such as the lambs tongue with excellent precision. See below for our edge profile options.