Kitchen worktops in Temple

Yes. Residential sets within the Inns have small kitchens fitted into rooms that were never designed for them, typically a 1.8-2.6m run against a chimney breast or under a sash window, with wiring and plumbing surface-run in trunking. Everything is a careful retrofit rather than a design exercise, and stone is chosen for a hard-wearing surface in a heritage room rather than for a statement island. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. One trip is always better than three.

Inn of Court chambers building with residential sets, listed brick range around a court, postwar rebuild in period style and small flat within a legal building. Edwardian terraces are wider and taller than the Victorian houses next to them, so the kitchen usually takes a full-width rear room rather than a narrow outrigger. The laser plots the bow along the back of the run, which is why a tape reading taken beforehand never matches. Two to three hours, once the units are in.

The Temple is a private, gated precinct with controlled vehicle entry, porters and its own rules, so access has to be arranged through the Inn's estates office rather than turned up to. Internally it is cobbles and setts in the courts, narrow historic stairs with worn stone treads, and listed joinery you cannot unhang. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. That is part of what the visit is for.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Worn stone stair treads are slippery and uneven, and a two-man carry on those with a slab on edge is where people get hurt - use a proper frame and take the extra body.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Carcasses have to be sound first. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The laminate has been covering it up. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. No stone is cut from a plan. 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.