Worktop design and quotation in Kensington

Yes. Kensington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W8. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. Where a bay suspension or a permit is needed, that is a real cost and it goes on the quote instead of appearing later. You are told before you commit to a date. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. The kitchen is usually a long galley in a rear extension or side return, so the run lengths are the first thing we check against slab length — anything beyond roughly three metres either needs a join or a second slab, and that decision alone moves the material figure more than a few extra square metres would. You see it before you commit to anything. Get the porter's lift dimensions and permitted hours in writing before you order, because a block that only allows deliveries 10am to 4pm turns a one-day install into two.

Mansion blocks are the constraint - porters control the goods entrance, works are usually restricted to weekday mid-morning to mid-afternoon, and the service lift is the only one you are allowed to use with materials. Measure the lift car diagonally including the ceiling height, because a 3m slab only goes in a small lift if it can be stood on edge and tilted, and many of these cars have low soffits. 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. An access-driven join is priced like any other join, and people are always surprised to see one on a dead straight run. You see that figure before we template, not after. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop templating and worktop installation. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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. 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 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 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. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Every line has a reason next to it.