Worktop templating in Clapham Park

Yes. Clapham Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW4, SW2. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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.

Walls are dense block or in-situ concrete with a bonded plaster, so the bottom course of tiles brings plaster with it when the old top comes off. Unit height is the other issue: legs sit on an uneven screed or hard concrete with no give, so the template reads the top of every carcass rather than assuming they share a height. No stone is ever cut from a plan. Old estate kitchens often still have asbestos-era boxing around ducts, so nothing gets cut or drilled into that boxing without the landlord's confirmation of what it is.

The estate roads have controlled parking bays and the blocks use entryphone systems, with lifts in the taller blocks and stair-only access in the low-rise. New regeneration blocks have proper service entrances but require induction and booked lift time. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. 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. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first.

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. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. 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 notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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. Every base unit fixed to the wall, packed and levelled, and any dry-lining or patching completed - the template reads the wall face it is given, so that has to be the finished face. Managed stock usually comes with its own rules about working hours, waste, and who is allowed on site. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.