Worktop design and quotation in Tooting

Yes. Tooting is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW17. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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.

Many have been extended at the rear since being sold, so the kitchen is half original and half newer with a floor junction between the two. The fixed lines do not shrink with the room, so on a small kitchen they are a larger share of the total than the stone. You see it before you commit to anything. Where a second cooking run is added the extraction and the tiling both change, so agree the splashback panel height with the hob run before cutting anything.

Tooting High Street and Mitcham Road are constantly congested with buses and market delivery traffic, and the side streets are permit-controlled. Cottage-estate houses have narrow front doors and a hall under 900mm with the stair immediately inside. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. 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. 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. 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. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. Slab yield is worked out at quote stage, so if the layout forces a second slab you hear it before you commit rather than after. Shape first, area second. 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. This is the item most often left out of a cheaper quote, and it comes back as a variation once the templater has been. Better on the quote than in a variation. Send the run lengths plus a photo of every corner of the kitchen so we can spot boxed ducts, and tell us whether the sink is staying in the same position. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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.