Worktop design and quotation in Hackney Wick

Yes. Hackney Wick is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E9. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. 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. 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.

Steel columns and downstands land where the frame put them, which is frequently in the middle of what would otherwise be a clean run. The second driver is getting stone into the building: often a single goods lift, a long carry from the loading area, and occasionally a hoist through an opening, all of which sit in the fitting line as men and time rather than square metres. You see it before you commit to anything. Walls in these converted units are rarely plumb and often bare brick, so an upstand shows every undulation and a separate stone splashback scribed to the wall works far better.

Narrow lanes between the canal and the railway, gated yards, and buildings designed around goods vehicles rather than parking, a few still with loading doors and hoists. Newer blocks have booked service lifts while the older conversions can mean a long industrial stair. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. 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. Nothing about it gets estimated after the fact.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop fabrication. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Nothing payable until we template. 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. 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.

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. 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.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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 photos of the full route from where a van can park to the kitchen, including the goods lift and door widths, and tell us what the worktop is going back against. Where the owner is not local, the decisions happen remotely, so photographs and a clear itemised drawing carry more weight than a showroom visit ever would. Material is quoted as a supply range and the labour lines separately, because an installed rate per square metre is not a real number. Every line has a reason next to it.