Services
The numbered list
01
Quartz counters — $72–90 / sq ft installed
Three-centimetre engineered quartz, non-porous from the factory and never sealed in its life. Digital template in the price, undermount cutouts routed in the shop, and the pattern repeat unrolled beside you at the yard so nobody discovers it after install.
02
Granite & quartzite — $66–112 / sq ft installed
The natural stones that take a hot pan and forgive a life: granite sealed here for fifteen years, quartzite harder still and honed like paper. Cut from bundles you have stood in front of, never from a swatch book.
03
Marble & soapstone — $86–116 / sq ft installed
Two or three centimetres, veins matched at every seam the slabs allow, soapstone oiled to a deep charcoal on our bench before it travels. The etch sample rides along with every marble quote.
04
Edge work, upstands & repairs — from $24 / linear ft
Ogee, bullnose and mitered aprons ground and polished at the hand bench; full-height stone upstands instead of a silicone bead; chips and burns in existing stone dressed until the incident is a rumour.
How it goes
Four stations, one bench
The yard, together
Tuesday or Thursday morning. You reserve the bundles you like; we photograph every face so the stone you chose is provably the stone that lands.
The laser template
Two hours in your kitchen on the existing tops. Bows, out-of-square walls, the lot — read to a quarter millimetre, with seam placement approved by you on screen.
The bench
The file drives the saw, mitered pairs clamp overnight, and the edges come to the hand bench. The log records which bench, which day, whose hands.
The set
Old tops out and receipted, stone levelled, seams closed at 1.6 mm. One morning; the kitchen cooks again by four.
The Withy Brooks, 2025 — 2026
Runs we have signed
Six from the last year, photographed at handover. The caption names the stone and the tolerance that mattered — sometimes it was the wall, not the slab.
Rope Walk, Ashcott
Two names on the bench
A laser digitizer, a CNC saw and a hand bench under a north window in a Rope Walk workshop the size of a chapel. Vane reads the numbers; Stratum rides the edges; the person who templates your kitchen is standing in it when the stone lands. Sixteen years, one bench, and a policy that survives every busy season: the drawing is signed before the blade is chosen, and the file stays yours for life.
Fits once, or the recut is ours
Every top is cut to the signed template file. If a Vane & Stratum top does not fit because our arithmetic was wrong, the recut, the stone and the second visit are ours — and the template file goes home with you either way.
Our kitchen wall bows nine millimetres and nobody had ever told us — including the fitter whose cabinets followed it. The laser mapped it, the drawing showed a scribed back edge, and the quartz landed flush along the whole run. My wife has banned me from telling the story at dinner parties.
They found a grey cloud in my slab and moved the seam eight inches so it landed inside the cloud, then showed me both drawings to prove the stone was still from the same bundle. The card said eighty-nine a foot; the invoice said eighty-nine a foot.
A pharmacy counter is a health inspection with a worktop. Undermount sinks, no lip, seams you could not culture anything in — the inspector ran a glove along the epoxy line, said “huh”, and wrote the pass.
The five we always get
Measured answers
The questions that come with every kitchen in the Brooks. If yours is not here, the bench line at the bottom runs seven to five and answers in fractions.
Why does porosity decide my maintenance?
Quartz is resin-bound and non-porous — wine, turmeric and beetroot sit on the surface until you wipe them, forever. Granite and marble carry micro-pores that will drink a spill given twenty minutes, so they leave here with a fifteen-year impregnating sealer that buys you exactly that. Neither is wrong; one is a Sunday morning and the other is a Saturday night.
Where will my seams actually land?
On the drawing you sign. Runs longer than a slab — about three metres — need joints; we place them over cabinet cross-rails and inside veining where the eye will not stop. A seam over a dishwasher or a freestanding range is a crack waiting for a loading day, and we refuse those in writing.
Honed or polished — does it matter to the fit?
Not to the fit; entirely to the life. Polished marble shows etching as a small tragedy and honed shows it as a soft shadow; a leathered granite face hides the fingerprints a polished one wears like news. We bring three samples of the same stone to the measure so the decision happens in your light, not ours.
Do you template over the old tops?
Yes — the kitchen stays live until install morning. The digitizer reads the cabinets the old tops sit on, the drawing adjusts for the new tops’ thickness, and the only day without a kettle is the day of the set itself.
What do you not do?
Plumbing, electrical and cabinets. We cut tap holes to your fixture’s template, hold the sink in the set, and coordinate the morning with your plumber — the Brooks’ plumbers already know our timings by heart.
Bench consultations Wednesdays and Saturdays · (555) 019-0577 · bench@vanestratum.example
Start with the measurement
Room, run lengths if you have them, and the age of the house — the older the wall, the more the laser earns its keep. The card rate and the seam drawing come back together, before anything is cut. bench@vanestratum.example