Worktop design and quotation in Sands End

Yes. Sands End is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW6. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. Tell us at enquiry stage and it is priced properly, because a crew stood waiting is the most expensive thing on any job. You are told before you commit to a date. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Access is a question about the plot rather than the house: a narrow frontage between older buildings with nowhere obvious to stand a van. This is usually the cheapest stock we fit: the room is square, walls are plumb, the lift works and the corridors are clear, so fitting time is predictable and we rarely add a join for access. Priced from the building, not from a rate card. In the new-build townhouses the underfloor heating manifolds sit in the utility run, so agree cut-outs and access panels with the M and E drawings before templating.

Ongoing construction across the regeneration area means temporary road layouts, contractor gates and hoarding lines that change month to month, so the approach needs confirming on the day. In finished blocks it is the standard managed routine - booked bay, goods lift, corridor protection - while the cottage streets have no loading bays and heavy resident parking. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop fabrication and worktop templating. 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. 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. 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. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Material is the slab only, and it says so.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. 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.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. Priced as fabrication, not as area. Send a floor plan with the run lengths and confirm whether the existing units and sink are staying, along with the goods lift or loading bay rules if the building has any. 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. 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.