Worktop design and quotation in Botany Bay

Yes. Botany Bay is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN2. It is run from the Watford side, covering Hertfordshire & North London. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. 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.

Lime plaster over rubble moves in and out enough that a single long panel will show a gap somewhere along its length. An island a few hundred millimetres over the usable slab length costs a whole second slab, which is worth knowing before the layout is fixed. That is what the itemised lines are for. Range cookers in these houses sit in a masonry recess that is never square - template the two flanking tops individually with a tolerance gap, do not assume a symmetrical opening.

Narrow lanes with no pavement, no lighting and passing places only, plus horses and farm traffic. A long-wheelbase van fits but reversing out is not an option, so turning space has to be confirmed first. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop templating and worktop installation. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Material is the slab only, and it says so. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. 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. No installed rate per square metre, because it is not a real number. 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. This is the item most often left out of a cheaper quote, and it comes back as a variation once the templater has been. Photographs are worth more than a plan here. Send the island size including the overhang and which side people sit at, the stool count, and confirm the edge profile you want and which edges are to receive it. 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. Nothing payable until template.