Worktop design and quotation in Southend

Yes. Southend is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. 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.

The chimney breast in the corner has usually been left in place, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends. 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. Priced from the building, not from a rate card. Drives on most houses make delivery easy, the fiddly part is the 1930s serving hatch that clients often want kept.

Wide suburban roads with verges and drives, though the South Circular running through the middle makes stopping on the main road impossible at peak times. 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. We price the carry from what you tell us about the route, so photographs of the approach are worth more to us than a floor plan. Nothing about it gets estimated after the fact.

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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. 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. Nothing payable until we template.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. 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. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. 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. 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. Nothing is payable until we template, so a quote can sit while consents and decisions catch up. Written to be read by whoever is paying.