Worktop design and quotation in Kew

Yes. Kew is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW9. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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.

Where the side return has been filled in, the old external wall is now an internal one and still carries its render, its gutter line and its old fixings. 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. Priced from the building, not from a rate card. Conservation rules keep the extensions narrow, so the run ends up long and thin - watch the overhang at the return where the wall kicks out.

Conservation area covering most of the streets, so skips and scaffolding are consented and frontages are protected; parking is permit-controlled all day and the level crossing and one-way loops make the approach slow. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. 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. 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.

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. Slab yield is worked out at quote stage, so if the layout forces a second slab you hear it before you commit rather than after. Shape first, area second. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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. Nothing is payable until we template, so a quote can sit while consents and decisions catch up. Nothing payable until template.