Worktop design and quotation in Frognal

Yes. Frognal is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW3. It is run from the Watford side, covering Hertfordshire & North London. 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. Where a bay suspension or a permit is needed, that is a real cost and it goes on the quote instead of appearing later. 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.

These blocks were built with a lift from new, which will usually take a worktop and almost never takes a full-length island piece. The lift car is the single biggest price driver here. Priced from the building, not from a rate card. Full-height splashbacks and island returns mean batch-matching matters more here than access does, so reserve slabs from one block and lay them out before cutting.

Wide but steep roads with in-and-out drives, so vehicle access to the door is usually good and the constraint is the long gravel drive and the steps up to the entrance rather than the parking. A few houses have gated entrances too narrow for a long-wheelbase van. 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. 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 fabrication and worktop installation. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Nothing payable until we template. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Material is the slab only, and it says so.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. 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.

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. Measure the internal lift car — width, depth and height — and photograph the stair turn and landing doors, then send those with the run lengths. 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. 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.