Worktop design and quotation in Barnes Cray

Yes. Barnes Cray is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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.

The goods lift is generous and the flat entrance often is not, so the tightest point on the route is inside the flat rather than in the building. The second driver is getting stone into the building: often a single goods lift, a long carry from the loading area, and occasionally a hoist through an opening, all of which sit in the fitting line as men and time rather than square metres. You see it before you commit to anything. Bathrooms and boilers off the kitchen put pipework in the run, expect notching and awkward cut-outs behind the units.

Flat riverside ground with wide but frequently blocked estate roads and industrial traffic; parking is on-street and generally available. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. You see that figure before we template, not after.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop templating. 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. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Nothing payable until we template. 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. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Material is the slab only, and it says so.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. Each run is priced on its own line against the supply rate, with the join count and the reason for each join stated. No installed rate per square metre, because it is not a real number. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Better on the quote than in a variation. Send photos of the full route from where a van can park to the kitchen, including the goods lift and door widths, and tell us what the worktop is going back against. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. 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.