Kitchen worktops in Maryland

Yes. Small two-bed terraces with the kitchen in a narrow rear addition, generally 2.2m to 2.8m in an L with the back door at the end of the run. A good number are split into upper and lower flats, so kitchens end up in odd rooms with services run along the wall. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. A booked bay only helps if it is empty when we arrive.

Victorian terrace, flat over shop and small recent apartment block. The flat entrance door is a certified fire door on a closer, and taking it off for an hour means dealing with the seals and the closer before the day ends. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

Streets are tight, terraced and permit-controlled, with parking pressure from the station making a kerbside space near the door unlikely. Flats above the shops on the main parade have a shared side entrance and a straight steep stair with no turning space at the top. Open-tread and cantilevered stairs give nothing to lean a piece against, so the whole weight stays on the crew for the full length of the flight. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. It decides whether the old top leaves whole.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The annexe top goes in on the same day. Conversion flats here often have the sink on an external wall with a soil pipe boxed behind it, so the back scribe has to allow for the boxing.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Sequenced around access rather than around the workshop. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Silicone finishes the job; it does not rescue it.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Original quarry tile is often still down under two or three later floor coverings, which is why the finished floor height is rarely what anyone expects. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Overhangs get brackets before anyone leans on them.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. A handrail that has to come off before a piece will pass is twenty minutes at the start of the day, and it goes back on the wall before we leave. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. Both movements are planned as one.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured.