Worktop design and quotation in Roxbourne

Yes. Roxbourne is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA2. 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. 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.

An ex-council house is solidly built to a standard plan, with the kitchen at the rear and a back door next to it. 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. Uniform stock means a template from one house nearly fits the next, but never assume it, because 1930s builders varied the back-door corner by an inch or two.

Uniform estate roads with drives on many houses and consistent side gate widths, which makes access predictable; maisonette blocks need a shared external stair and a two-person lift up. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. You see that figure before we template, not after. 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 installation. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. 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. Nothing payable until we template.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. 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.

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. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Photographs are worth more than a plan here. 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. Managed stock usually comes with its own rules about working hours, waste, and who is allowed on site. 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.