Worktop design and quotation in Hoxton

Yes. Hoxton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. 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. 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.

The internal stair is usually a straight flight with a tight top landing, and it is the landing rather than the flight that is the limit. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same day's work whether the kitchen is five square metres or eight, so on a small kitchen they are a larger share of the total, and one slab covers the lot, which makes the material band the main lever you actually control. You see it before you commit to anything. Deck-access blocks mean a long exposed carry along an open walkway, so weather matters here in a way it does not elsewhere, and a slab on edge in a gust four floors up is the risk to design out.

Estate courtyards with bollards, filtered residential streets, red route sections on the A10 edge and restrictions on Old Street to the south. Estate blocks have small lifts and long deck-access walkways to cross before you reach the door. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. 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. Material is the slab only, and it says so. 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. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. Better on the quote than in a variation. Send the run lengths plus a photo of every corner of the kitchen so we can spot boxed ducts, and tell us whether the sink is staying in the same position. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Written to be read by whoever is paying.