Worktop design and quotation in Maryland

Yes. Maryland is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E15. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. It is one line among the others, and it is honest. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. The second thing is the carry route: front door, narrow hall, a turn at the stairs and often a step down into the extension, which can mean a piece that would template in one length has to be split to physically get into the room. That is what the itemised lines are for. 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.

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. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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.

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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Material is the slab only, and it says so.

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. 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. Shape first, area second. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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 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. 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. 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.