Worktops 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. A bay suspension carries a fee and a notice period, and the notice period is the part that catches people out when a date moves. Whatever the standing allows, the stone leaves that van finished, because every edge, cut-out and internal radius is machined at the works and none of it is open to reconsideration at the kerb. The face is uncovered once, and that once is at handover. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or 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 kitchen in one of these sits in the back addition and takes its daylight from one end, so the working half of the run is the darker half and a pale stone with a honed or matt face does more there than any colour with depth in it. A galley nests efficiently and frees money for better stone. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. Every notch and every scribe is machined into the piece before it leaves the works, and a hard sintered surface is the least forgiving of a tight internal corner, so one is always cut with a generous radius. What the room obstructs, the layout pays for in slab.

Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. That caps the longest piece, and a run split into two lengths nests differently on the slab, which moves the yield and moves the figure with it. Pattern is carried across a seam on the bench, never by eye on site. 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. A granite kitchen ends its day with a sealer, and a sealer wants a dry face and a quiet hour afterwards, so that hour is written into the day rather than borrowed from it. Stone arrives finished, because a kerb is not a polishing shop.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Where several kitchens are ordered together the sensible move is to take them all off one batch, because two slabs of the same name bought six months apart will not sit happily in the same building. The remainder of a slab is bought whether it is fitted or not. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Volume work tends to live at the entry end of the range, and the entry end is genuine stone rather than a compromise, since the lowest supply figure we quote is a sintered surface and not a thin laminate pretending to be one. A focal surface deserves to be seen at full size.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. A shape like that nests kindly on a slab, so more of what gets bought ends up on the units and the rate per square metre behaves much as the brochure says it will. Every return end is another polished face to pay for. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. A hob dropped into the middle of a length puts sustained warmth at the lip of a cut-out, and an engineered surface will yellow there across ten years where a natural one takes it without comment. A cut-out beside a notch leaves very little stone in between. Send the run lengths, say where the sink and hob will sit, and tell us which way the room faces and what lighting is going in above the working run. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. Where nobody will be around to maintain it, the surface is chosen for indifference: an engineered top asks for nothing beyond a cloth, while a natural one wants sealing and someone willing to do it. Phasing works only if the second phase matches the first batch.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. 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. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Suction lifters earn their keep on a straight flight and become a liability on a winder, where a handle standing out from the face is one more thing to catch on a wall. Where a seam becomes unavoidable the choice of stone starts to matter, because a fine even speckle closes a joint almost invisibly and a broad vein simply will not. The way in caps the piece, and the slab layout follows the cap.

Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. An island is the piece that decides whether one slab covers the kitchen or two, and a second slab arrives as a step in the figure rather than a gentle slope. The island is usually the piece that opens the second slab.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. Nothing changes hands until after the template. A cast iron soil stack runs down the outside of the rear wall, so moving the sink means a fresh penetration through solid brick. Which stone belongs on top of all that is a separate question from the building itself, and it is the one with a figure attached, because supply alone runs from £110 to £550 per square metre before a single cut has been made. Veining is a question of scale, and a postcard has no scale.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. The surface is where the money actually moves: across the 181 kitchens fitted the median is £220 per square metre, and half of them land between £165 and £300. Heat tolerance is a property of the material, not a claim about it.