Worktop design and quotation in Bromley Common

Yes. Bromley Common is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR2. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. 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. It is one line among the others, and it is honest. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

An inter-war terrace is wider than a Victorian one and shallower than a semi, so the kitchen is a compact square room rather than a galley. 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. Priced from the building, not from a rate card. Boiler pipework and a back door swing eat into the run here, so the template has to work around fixed services rather than the other way round.

Front gardens converted to hardstanding on the private roads make it easy, but the ex-local-authority terraces have shared paths and no vehicle access to the rear, so it is a front-door carry through a narrow hall. 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. 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. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. 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.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. It is the shape rather than the square metreage that moves the number, which is why two kitchens the same size quote differently. 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 notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Nothing payable until template.