Worktop design and quotation in Westcombe Park

Yes. Westcombe Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE3, SE10. 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. 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.

The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. The kitchen is usually a long galley in a rear extension or side return, so the run lengths are the first thing we check against slab length — anything beyond roughly three metres either needs a join or a second slab, and that decision alone moves the material figure more than a few extra square metres would. That is what the itemised lines are for. This is island country — pieces are big and heavy, so check the floor structure and whether the route round the side of the house beats the hallway.

Mostly straightforward: wide front paths, off-street parking on a fair number of plots and gently sloping roads down toward the railway, though streets nearest the station fill with commuter parking through the day. 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. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. 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. 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. Material is the slab only, and it says so.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. 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. 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.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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 us the run lengths, plus photos taken walking from the pavement through the hall to the kitchen so we can see the door widths and the stair turn. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.