Worktop design and quotation in Surrey Quays

Yes. Surrey Quays is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE16. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. 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. Tell us at enquiry stage and it is priced properly, because a crew stood waiting is the most expensive thing on any job. 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.

Access is a question about the plot rather than the house: a narrow frontage between older buildings with nowhere obvious to stand a van. This is usually the cheapest stock we fit: the room is square, walls are plumb, the lift works and the corridors are clear, so fitting time is predictable and we rarely add a join for access. You see it before you commit to anything. These kitchens were built to a budget with 600mm carcasses that have sagged, so the units usually need packing and levelling before a stone top goes anywhere near them.

Estate roads loop and dead-end around the water, so satnav puts you on the wrong side of a dock; most houses have an allocated bay or an integral garage forecourt within carrying distance of the door. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. An access-driven join is priced like any other join, and people are always surprised to see one on a dead straight run. 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 splashbacks & upstands. 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. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Nothing payable until we template. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. 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.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. It is the shape rather than the square metreage that moves the number, which is why two kitchens the same size quote differently. 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.

Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. Better on the quote than in a variation. Send a floor plan with the run lengths and confirm whether the existing units and sink are staying, along with the goods lift or loading bay rules if the building has any. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.