Worktop templating in Colliers Wood

Yes. Colliers Wood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW19, CR4. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. 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. 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.

Dot-and-dab plasterboard bellies at a taped internal angle, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. New-build rooms are genuinely square, but they are dot-and-dab plasterboard, and the taped internal angle is where it goes wrong - the board bellies at the corner and the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm. Two to three hours, once the units are in. Developer kitchens here are built to a tight 600mm module with the sink already cut into a fixed position, so measure the existing cutouts before quoting a straight swap.

The new blocks have loading bays and a goods lift but both need booking with the concierge and there is a hard time limit on the bay. The older terraces sit on streets that back onto the river and industrial units, so vans get boxed in by delivery traffic on the A24. 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. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. 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. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Appliances on site, not on order.

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. 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.

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. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. Boards taped or skimmed and finished, units fixed back to the wall and levelled off, and the appliances on site - the wall must be at its final thickness on template day, so no tiler or splashback fitter gets ahead of the worktop. 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.