Worktop design and quotation in Forest Hill

Yes. Forest Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE23. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Tell us at enquiry stage and it is priced properly, because a crew stood waiting is the most expensive thing on any job. Nothing here is added after the fact. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original walls are thick, lime-plastered and rarely straight, which makes dry-laying and scribing the bulk of the fitting day. 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 gradient is the constraint, check the van can hold the hill outside the house before planning the offload.

Very steep roads on both sides of the valley, tight bends and limited parking near the station; a lot of houses sit above the road behind long flights of steps with the garden well below. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. We price the carry from what you tell us about the route, so photographs of the approach are worth more to us than a floor plan. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. 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. 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. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Nothing payable until we template.

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. 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.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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 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. Every line has a reason next to it.