Worktop templating in Blackheath Standard

Yes. Blackheath Standard is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE3, SE7. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Post-war terraces have a short straight hall to the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than the houses they replaced. Post-war terraces have a fairly shallow, standardised kitchen, and the walls tend to lean rather than bow, so the scribe at worktop height is different from the one at plinth level - the template only cares about the line where the stone will land. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. On the Span houses keep to slim profiles and modest overhangs, the original joinery and window lines are tight and a chunky mitred edge reads wrong immediately.

The Span courtyards are car-free with communal parking set back from the houses, so it is a barrow or carry across paving; the Victorian streets have permit bays and nothing else. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. Real angles, not plan angles. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. Units fixed, packed level and pushed as far back as the leaning wall allows, walls made good to final thickness with tiling left until after the worktop, and the sink, tap and hob on site so cut-outs are set from the real items. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.