Worktop templating in Blackhorse Lane

Yes. Blackhorse Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E17. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Waltham Forest. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Poured screed over steel decking can fall away across a long run, so level is checked across the whole room before anything is packed. Exposed brick and steel is the whole job here: the brick face is not a flat plane, it moves in and out over its height and along its length, so the scribe is taken at the exact height the worktop will sit rather than off the wall generally. No stone is ever cut from a plan. The new blocks take a full-length single piece up a decent goods lift, which is worth designing for rather than defaulting to a jointed run.

The main road is a bus and cycle corridor with limited stopping, so deliveries route into the developments' service yards, which need booking with the building manager. Newer blocks have proper goods lifts, but the older industrial units are reached through shared yards with roller doors and no lift at all. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. That is part of what the visit is for.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop fabrication. 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Appliances on site, not on order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

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 template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. The drawing leaves site complete. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Exposed structure means the back edge is not a straight line at all, and a scribe of fifteen or twenty millimetres across a run is normal. 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 and levelled, all steelwork and brick cleaned, sealed and finished, and any boarded sections completed to final thickness so the template picks up the surface the stone will actually meet. Access in a tenanted flat depends on the tenant, so the template and fitting dates are agreed with whoever actually holds the keys. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. No stone is cut from a plan.