Worktop design and quotation in Coney Hall

Yes. Coney Hall is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR4. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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.

An ex-council house is solidly built to a standard plan, with the kitchen at the rear and a back door next to it. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same day's work whether the kitchen is five square metres or eight, so on a small kitchen they are a larger share of the total, and one slab covers the lot, which makes the material band the main lever you actually control. That is what the itemised lines are for. 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. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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 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. 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. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Nothing payable until we template.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. It is the shape rather than the square metreage that moves the number, which is why two kitchens the same size quote differently. 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.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.