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. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

Victorian terrace, flat over shop and small recent apartment block. 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. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. What is under the old top is the real question.

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. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. 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. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. 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.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The join is the last thing finished. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

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. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Sound carcasses are the condition. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.