Worktop design and quotation in Stanmore

Yes. Stanmore is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA7. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. 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. You are told before you commit to a date. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen is usually a rear room extended into the garden, with the original external wall now standing inside the run. 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. Separate meat and dairy runs mean planning two identical worktops from the same batch so the colour matches across the room, and that is a slab reservation decision, not a fitting decision.

Long gravel or block-paved driveways with gates and often a turning circle, so vehicles get very close, but the internal carry from the front door to the rear kitchen can be 15m or more with a hallway turn. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. 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. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication and worktop installation. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Nothing payable until we template.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. Each run is priced on its own line against the supply rate, with the join count and the reason for each join stated. The join count is stated with its reason. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. Photographs are worth more than a plan here. 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. 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. Written to be read by whoever is paying.