Worktop design and quotation in Battersea

Yes. Battersea is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW11, SW8. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. Nothing here is added after the fact. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A two-up two-down has a kitchen that was never designed to be one, so the run is short, the ceiling is low and every millimetre of depth gets argued over. The second thing is the carry route: front door, narrow hall, a turn at the stairs and often a step down into the extension, which can mean a piece that would template in one length has to be split to physically get into the room. That is what the itemised lines are for. Cottage kitchens here run out of headroom before they run out of width, so check the height under the stair bulkhead where the run passes beneath it.

Cottage streets are narrow, fully permit-controlled and parked solid, with front doors opening straight onto a 1.2m pavement. Ceilings are low and the hall is short, so a slab cannot be swung — it goes in flat and low. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. We price the carry from what you tell us about the route, so photographs of the approach are worth more to us than a floor plan. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. 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. Slab yield is worked out at quote stage, so if the layout forces a second slab you hear it before you commit rather than after. Shape first, area second. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. This is the item most often left out of a cheaper quote, and it comes back as a variation once the templater has been. Photographs are worth more than a plan here. Send us the run lengths, plus photos taken walking from the pavement through the hall to the kitchen so we can see the door widths and the stair turn. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Material is quoted as a supply range and the labour lines separately, because an installed rate per square metre is not a real number. Every line has a reason next to it.