Worktop design and quotation in Cranbrook

Yes. Cranbrook is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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.

These kitchens are big rooms with long perimeter runs and an island, so level has to hold across the whole floor rather than along one wall. If the island top is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, you buy a second slab to gain that overhang, the whole slab, not the part you use, and that is a material decision worth more than any other line on the quote. Priced from the building, not from a rate card. The house is wide but the front steps are the pinch point, we carry sideways up to the porch, and a heavy 30mm island top usually needs four hands rather than two.

Wide tree-lined roads with a good number of original carriage drives, so a van can usually get close to the door, but the front paths are long and often stepped up to a raised ground floor. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. 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 installation and worktop replacement. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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. 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.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. This is the item most often left out of a cheaper quote, and it comes back as a variation once the templater has been. Better on the quote than in a variation. Send the island size including the overhang and which side people sit at, the stool count, and confirm the edge profile you want and which edges are to receive it. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. 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.