Worktop design and quotation in Fulham Reach

Yes. Fulham Reach is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. Where a bay suspension or a permit is needed, that is a real cost and it goes on the quote instead of appearing later. 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.

The room is genuinely square and the units are plumb, so the visit is more about the building than about the kitchen. This is usually the cheapest stock we fit: the room is square, walls are plumb, the lift works and the corridors are clear, so fitting time is predictable and we rarely add a join for access. That is what the itemised lines are for. Everything is fixed by the developer's services, so this is a precision replacement job - measure the existing undermount and drainage grooves, do not redesign them.

Managed estate with a concierge desk, contractor sign-in, insurance checks and a booked goods lift that has to be protected before use. There is a basement car park with a height barrier and a loading bay, and once out of the lift the corridors are long and carpeted, so boards go down before anything is wheeled. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. 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. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Material is the slab only, and it says so.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. 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. 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.

Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. 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 a floor plan with the run lengths and confirm whether the existing units and sink are staying, along with the goods lift or loading bay rules if the building has any. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.