Worktop design and quotation in Dormers Wells

Yes. Dormers Wells is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB1. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. 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. You are told before you commit to a date. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Rear access through a garden or a shared path means long pieces can usually come in whole from the back. 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. Rear extensions here are frequently built to the boundary on both sides, so measure the internal door widths carefully because there is no garden route as a fallback.

Residential streets with hardstanding on most frontages and easy on-street parking. The Uxbridge Road and Greenford Avenue are where the delays are. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. You see that figure before we template, not after.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Slab yield is worked out at quote stage, so if the layout forces a second slab you hear it before you commit rather than after. 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.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. This is the item most often left out of a cheaper quote, and it comes back as a variation once the templater has been. Priced as fabrication, not as area. 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. Every line has a reason next to it.