Worktop design and quotation in Highgate

Yes. Highgate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N6, N19. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. Tell us at enquiry stage and it is priced properly, because a crew stood waiting is the most expensive thing on any job. 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.

Doorways are low and narrow, which is a genuine constraint on piece length before anything else is considered. Big islands are what drive the number. That is what the itemised lines are for. On the hill the walk from where the van can legally stop to the front door is often longer than the kitchen itself, so plan the lift and the carry order before anything comes off the vehicle.

Very steep approach roads, narrow lanes parked both sides, and conservation-area frontages that sit close to the pavement with no lay-by. Several of the mansion blocks are walk-ups with a communal stair that turns twice before the first floor. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. An access-driven join is priced like any other join, and people are always surprised to see one on a dead straight run. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. 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. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. 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. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Material is the slab only, and it says so.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. It is the shape rather than the square metreage that moves the number, which is why two kitchens the same size quote differently. Shape first, area second. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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 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. 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.