Worktop design and quotation in Battersea

Yes. Battersea is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW11, SW8. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. Where a bay suspension or a permit is needed, that is a real cost and it goes on the quote instead of appearing later. 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.

Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. The quote separates the joins the run needs from the joins the route forces, because they are different decisions with the same price. Priced from the building, not from a rate card. 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. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. 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 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. 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. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Nothing payable until we template.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Each run is priced on its own line against the supply rate, with the join count and the reason for each join stated. 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.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. Priced as fabrication, not as area. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Written to be read by whoever is paying.