Worktop design and quotation in Between the Commons

Yes. Between the Commons is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW11. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. Where a bay suspension or a permit is needed, that is a real cost and it goes on the quote instead of appearing later. You are told before you commit to a date. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. The quote separates the joins the run needs from the joins the route forces, because they are different decisions with the same price. That is what the itemised lines are for. The island is the whole job here, get the exact spine position and the overhang for stools agreed on site before templating, because clients change their mind about seating after the units land.

Uniform terraces with small front gardens, permit-only parking that is full by 9am, and no vehicle access to the rear at all. Everything goes down the hallway past the stairs, and the hall width of roughly 950mm sets the maximum slab width that can be turned. 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. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. 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.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. 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.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. Better on the quote than in a variation. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. Nothing is payable until we template, so a quote can sit while consents and decisions catch up. Written to be read by whoever is paying.