Worktop design and quotation in Sanderstead

Yes. Sanderstead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR2. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. 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.

A detached house of this age has a drive, a side path and a back door, so access is rarely the constraint and the design can follow the room. These are typically two runs and a return, often into a rear extension, and the return piece is the awkward one, short, wide and rarely nesting well against the long pieces on the slab, so slab yield rather than total area is what pushes the material line up. You see it before you commit to anything. Split-level rear extensions mean two worktop heights in one room, and clients often want a continuous stone look across the step, which has to be resolved as two separate runs with a deliberate break.

Hilly roads with steep, often curved driveways and split-level frontages, so getting close to the door is fine but the last few metres involve a slope or a set of steps. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication and worktop installation. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. 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. 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.

Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Better on the quote than in a variation. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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.