Worktop design and quotation in Barbican

Yes. Barbican is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2Y. It is worked on our the City run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. It is one line among the others, and it is honest. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Post-war terraces have a short straight hall to the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than the houses they replaced. Runs are short, joins are few and the biggest single question is whether we can go in through the back, a rear door straight from the garden into the kitchen usually lets us fit long pieces whole, whereas a mid-terrace with no side gate means everything comes through the front and may need splitting. That is what the itemised lines are for. Do a full dry run of the route from car park lift to flat door before ordering, because the Barbican's walk-in is longer and more awkward than any staircase in the City.

There is no vehicle access to the podium at all - you park in one of the estate car parks below, then use a car park lift and walk the highwalks and internal corridors, which can be several hundred metres with multiple fire doors and level changes. Lift cars in the residential cores are small with low ceilings, so anything over about 2.2m has to be assessed against the specific core before you cut. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. An access-driven join is priced like any other join, and people are always surprised to see one on a dead straight run. Nothing about it gets estimated after the fact.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Nothing payable until we template. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Material is the slab only, and it says so.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. It is the shape rather than the square metreage that moves the number, which is why two kitchens the same size quote differently. The join count is stated with its reason. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. This is the item most often left out of a cheaper quote, and it comes back as a variation once the templater has been. Priced as fabrication, not as area. Tell us whether there is side or rear access to the kitchen from outside, and send the run lengths with a photo of the window and boiler positions. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. Material is quoted as a supply range and the labour lines separately, because an installed rate per square metre is not a real number. Nothing payable until template.