CAN YOU GIVE A PRICE PER SQUARE METRE?

Can you give a price by the square metre?

Many prospective customers ask us for square metre prices and are sometimes a bit put out when we explain that we don’t work that way. This brief article tries to explain why a square metre price system really doesn’t work and wouldn’t make our quotation process as fair to our customers.

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First of all, there is more to a worktop quote than simply the material cost. Templating, manufacture and installation are always a significant part of the quotation, and sometimes labour costs can exceed the material cost. Given that there are many options involved – curved corners, pencil round profile edges, different types of sink cutout, presence or absence of a hob etc. – the price can vary wildly for a given surface area.

Secondly, kitchen designs vary in efficiency of slab use. Even where two kitchens have the same surface area of finished worktop, they may have quite different materials costs because of the way slabs have to be cut to produce the worktops. Some slabs cost more; some worktops produce more wastage. We try to take this into account when quoting. Effectively, we quote standard worktops on a linear basis, using a 3 metre run as standard, and islands and peninsulas on an area basis, using a whole quartz slab as our standard.

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Where a kitchen has a range or free-standing cooker between two L-shaped corners, it is often preferable to cut them in one piece, using larger slabs and polishing an internal corner to form each L-shape. This arrangement avoids a join, but means the use of more expensive slabs, some of which is thrown away, plus the cost of the special polishing involved.

You can see the effects of all this in the two diagrams below, where the two kitchens have a very similar surface area of worktop…

 

Kitchen A

 

Kitchen Worktops Measurements

 

Kitchen B

 

Kitchen Worktops

The “per square metre price” can be seen to be a very unreliable guide when it comes to getting a clear view of what your kitchen worktops will cost, even in our stock materials. When we quote for bespoke colours and engineered stones that we do not stock it becomes even more irrelevant. With bought-in slabs, everything depends on how many slabs we have to buy. Different manufacturers make quartz slabs at different sizes, and a few make half slabs. These factors make it impossible to establish a linear relationship between the wholesale per square metre slab price and the cost for any given kitchen.

 

What is the best way to get a quotation for my new kitchen worktops?

If you are having a new kitchen with new units, then you probably have a plan provided by the company that is making/installing the new kitchen. Feel free to check out our page on getting a quotation, or go straight to our quotation form, or email us with your plan and other details.

 

If you are not replacing the units, or you are but have no plan, you will need to send us measurements from which we can work. Take a look at our page on how to measure your kitchen for a worktop quotation.

kitchen-plan

At Affordable Granite we pride ourselves on our fair and open pricing policy and always aim to offer the best product for the customer’s needs at the right price. For an accurate installed price please email your plan to sales@affordablegranite.co.uk or contact our Sales Team on 01293 863992.

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