Worktop design and quotation in Strawberry Hill

Yes. Strawberry Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW1, TW2. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. 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. Tell us at enquiry stage and it is priced properly, because a crew stood waiting is the most expensive thing on any job. 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.

Houses of this period came with generous garages and utility rooms, so a second short run of stone is often part of the same job. 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. That is what the itemised lines are for. Big interwar houses have solid floors that fall towards the old back door, so worktop level and floor level diverge across a 4m run - shim early.

Quiet leafy roads with in-and-out drives and space to park on the plot, but a couple of railway-side roads narrow to single file and the level crossing holds traffic; mature front trees limit where a lorry can stop. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. An access-driven join is priced like any other join, and people are always surprised to see one on a dead straight run. You see that figure before we template, not after.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop templating and worktop installation. A second kitchen or a kitchenette in an annexe is a small job with the same fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines as a large one. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Nothing payable until we template. Extended households run kitchens hard, and that pushes the specification towards granite or sintered stone rather than a light quartz. 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.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. 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 junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. 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.