Worktop templating in Chelsea

Yes. Chelsea is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW3. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. 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. 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.

Listing and conservation conditions apply to a good number of these, which constrains what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what goes on top of the units. Victorian party walls and chimney-breast returns bow along their length, so the template plots the real line rather than assuming a straight one - the template picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. Two to three hours, once the units are in. Listed frontages mean the stone comes through the existing door opening or not at all, so template to the doorway first and the kitchen second.

Many of the older houses are listed, which rules out taking out a window or a sash to bring stone through, and the front doors are period joinery that nobody will let you unhang. Estate-managed blocks impose their own works hours and require notification to the managing agent, and the King's Road itself has loading restrictions through the day. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. The template records it along with everything else.

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.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. 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.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. Units fixed and packed level over the sloping floor, walls replastered and dry at their final thickness (tiling and splashbacks go on after the worktop, never before), and the sink, tap and hob physically on site, with a Belfast sink built in and set at its finished height. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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.