Worktop design and quotation in Raynes Park

Yes. Raynes Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW20. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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.

Original quarry-tiled floors sit lower than a later screed, so a run crossing that junction needs the units packed to one level. Slab yield rather than floor area is what moves the material line, and the return piece is usually the reason. Priced from the building, not from a rate card. 1930s houses almost always have a chimney breast or a flue in the corner of the old kitchen, so the return leg needs a notched back edge rather than a straight cut.

Most houses have a drive or hardstanding, which makes staging easy, but the railway bridge and the level crossings on the Kingston side determine which way a long van can approach. Side gates are usually just over 800mm, so a slab travels edge-on down the flank. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. 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. 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. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. 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.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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 extension drawing or the unit layout with the actual appliance model numbers, since cut-out sizes come from the appliance, not the cabinet. 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. Written to be read by whoever is paying.