Worktop design and quotation in De Beauvoir Town

Yes. De Beauvoir Town is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. Tell us at enquiry stage and it is priced properly, because a crew stood waiting is the most expensive thing on any job. 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.

Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. The kitchen is usually a long galley in a rear extension or side return, so the run lengths are the first thing we check against slab length, anything beyond roughly three metres either needs a join or a second slab, and that decision alone moves the material figure more than a few extra square metres would. You see it before you commit to anything. The houses repeat but the rear extensions do not, each one a different depth and squareness, so template every job rather than reusing a previous set of dimensions from the same street.

A conservation area with permit-only parking and filtered junctions closing most through routes, so the streets are quiet but hard to reach directly. Houses are set back with front paths and steps, and the internal halls are reasonably wide by period standards. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Nothing payable until we template. 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. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Material is the slab only, and it says so.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. 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.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Priced as fabrication, not as area. 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. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Written to be read by whoever is paying.