Worktop design and quotation in Dartmouth Park

Yes. Dartmouth Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW5. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. 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.

A long piece has to come through the front door, down the hall, round the newel post and through a doorway with a step down into the addition. The quote separates the joins the run needs from the joins the route forces, because they are different decisions with the same price. You see it before you commit to anything. The island is usually the biggest single piece of the job, so book the extra pair of hands and check the extension floor is level first, because new screed over old joist lines rarely is.

Steep tree-lined streets with permit bays both sides and no room to double park, and the gradient matters when you are walking a slab on an A-frame. Front doors are up a short flight with a long straight hall to the rear, so it is the kerb-to-door step that catches people out rather than the internal run. 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. An access-driven join is priced like any other join, and people are always surprised to see one on a dead straight run. You see that figure before we template, not after.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Material is the slab only, and it says so.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. Each run is priced on its own line against the supply rate, with the join count and the reason for each join stated. No installed rate per square metre, because it is not a real number. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. 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 someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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.