Worktop design and quotation in Coney Hall

Yes. Coney Hall is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR4. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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.

Walls are dense block or in-situ concrete with a bonded plaster, so the bottom course of tiles brings plaster with it when the old top comes off. Kitchens in this stock are usually compact and reasonably square, so total area is modest — but the fixed lines do not shrink with it. Priced from the building, not from a rate card. Taking out the rear lobby leaves a patched floor and a new opening, so we insist the plaster and floor are finished before templating or the run comes out 8mm shy.

Estate roads with parking on both sides and narrow front drives that only take one car, so the van often sits on the road and a slab goes over the front garden path. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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 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. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. 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. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. Each run is priced on its own line against the supply rate, with the join count and the reason for each join stated. Shape first, area second. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. Better on the quote than in a variation. Send the run lengths plus a photo of every corner of the kitchen so we can spot boxed ducts, and tell us whether the sink is staying in the same position. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Nothing payable until template.