Worktop templating in Coney Hall

Yes. Coney Hall is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR4. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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.

Many have been extended at the rear since being sold, so the kitchen is half original and half newer with a floor junction between the two. Concrete and dense block walls in ex-council stock cannot be chased back or packed out to suit, so the template takes the wall exactly as it is and the stone carries the scribe. No stone is ever cut from a plan. Taking out the rear lobby leaves a patched floor and a new opening, so we insist the plaster and floor are finished before templating or the run comes out 8mm shy.

Estate roads with parking on both sides and narrow front drives that only take one car, so the van often sits on the road and a slab goes over the front garden path. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. 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. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. 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.

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. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. 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. 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.