Worktop design and quotation in Scrattons Farm

Yes. Scrattons Farm is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG11. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. Nothing here is added after the fact. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Post-war terraces have a short straight hall to the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than the houses they replaced. Runs are short, joins are few and the biggest single question is whether we can go in through the back — a rear door straight from the garden into the kitchen usually lets us fit long pieces whole, whereas a mid-terrace with no side gate means everything comes through the front and may need splitting. Priced from the building, not from a rate card. The old pantry recess is rarely a clean rectangle, so if a full-height unit is going in there we template the recess rather than the room.

Quiet cul-de-sac layouts with front gardens and hardstanding on many houses, and little through traffic, so the van can generally sit outside the property. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

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 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. 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. 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. 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. It is the shape rather than the square metreage that moves the number, which is why two kitchens the same size quote differently. No installed rate per square metre, because it is not a real number. 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. This is the item most often left out of a cheaper quote, and it comes back as a variation once the templater has been. Priced as fabrication, not as area. Tell us whether there is side or rear access to the kitchen from outside, and send the run lengths with a photo of the window and boiler positions. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Nothing payable until template.