Worktop design and quotation in Greenwich

Yes. Greenwich is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE10. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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.

Where the side return has been filled in, the old external wall is now an internal one and still carries its render, its gutter line and its old fixings. The quote separates the joins the run needs from the joins the route forces, because they are different decisions with the same price. That is what the itemised lines are for. Nothing here is square, template off the fitted units rather than the walls, and check the stair turn will take a 3m piece before quoting it as one.

The one-way system, the pedestrianised streets around the market and resident-permit-only bays mean a slab usually has to be walked in from wherever the van can legally stop, through a narrow Georgian front door and often down a tight winder stair to a lower-ground kitchen. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. An access-driven join is priced like any other join, and people are always surprised to see one on a dead straight run. 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 templating, worktop replacement 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Material is the slab only, and it says so. 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.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. 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.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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.