Worktop design and quotation in Herne Hill

Yes. Herne Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE24. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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.

Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. Big islands are what drive the number. Priced from the building, not from a rate card. These are big rooms with big islands, so the carry through the hall and out to the rear is the deciding factor, measure the narrowest point on that route before agreeing a single-piece island.

The streets have front gardens and gate posts that narrow the approach, and permit parking is enforced. The area floods for events at the park and the railway bridge by the station is a bottleneck for anything arriving from the north. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. Nothing payable until we template. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Material is the slab only, and it says so.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. Each run is priced on its own line against the supply rate, with the join count and the reason for each join stated. Shape first, area second. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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 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. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. Nothing is payable until we template, so a quote can sit while consents and decisions catch up. Nothing payable until template.