Worktop design and quotation in Havering-atte-Bower

Yes. Havering-atte-Bower is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM4. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. 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.

Cottage terraces have no hall to speak of and the front door opens almost straight into the room, which makes the carry easier and the protection harder. 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. The lanes up to the village are steep and tight, so we work off a smaller vehicle for the final leg when the slab size allows it.

Narrow rising lanes with few passing places and no pavements in stretches, but once on the property there is ample drive space and no restrictions. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Nothing payable until we template. 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. 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.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. 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.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. This is the item most often left out of a cheaper quote, and it comes back as a variation once the templater has been. Better on the quote than in a variation. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. Nothing is payable until we template, so a quote can sit while consents and decisions catch up. Written to be read by whoever is paying.