Worktop templating in Borough

Yes. Borough is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Permitted works hours are commonly weekdays with a late start and an early finish, so a one-day fit is planned around the porter and the lift. Mansion-block kitchens usually have a serviced riser or boxed pipework somewhere in the run, and the boxing is rarely the same depth from one end to the other, so the template takes the depth at worktop height at several points rather than one reading. Two to three hours, once the units are in. Listed and conservation frontages mean no hoisting through windows, so the piece has to be dimensioned around the tightest turn on the stair.

Conservation area frontages with railings, a lightwell and a steep flight down to the basement door, plus a strictly enforced CPZ - the practical route is often the front steps and a hall turn rather than any side access. 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. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The template records it along with everything else.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop replacement. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. 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.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. One datum for the whole room. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. Boxing and riser casings built, cased and finished to their final surface, units fixed and levelled, and building access, lift booking and porter arrangements agreed so both the template visit and the later fit can run. 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. 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.