Worktop design and quotation in Dulwich Village

Yes. Dulwich Village is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE21. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. Runs are short, joins are few and the biggest single question is whether we can go in through the back, a rear door straight from the garden into the kitchen usually lets us fit long pieces whole, whereas a mid-terrace with no side gate means everything comes through the front and may need splitting. Priced from the building, not from a rate card. Clients here specify large-format slabs and book-matched islands, so slab selection and vein layout are part of the job rather than an afterthought.

The Dulwich Estate scheme of management governs external alterations, so extensions and rooflights are consented and often set back; the roads are wide with driveways and off-street standing, which makes this some of the easiest unloading in the borough. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. 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. Material is the slab only, and it says so.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. 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.

Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. Priced as fabrication, not as area. Tell us whether there is side or rear access to the kitchen from outside, and send the run lengths with a photo of the window and boiler positions. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. Material is quoted as a supply range and the labour lines separately, because an installed rate per square metre is not a real number. Nothing payable until template.