Worktop templating in Covent Garden

Yes. Covent Garden is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are WC2. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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.

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. The template plots the bow along the back of the run, which is why a tape reading taken beforehand never matches. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. Plan for a barrow carry of fifty metres or more and pieces short enough to handle without swinging them, because the walk-in rather than the kitchen sets the maximum slab length here.

Pedestrianised streets, timed vehicle bans, Congestion Charge and delivery windows that generally mean an early morning slot. The last stretch is almost always on foot from a loading point, then a narrow street door and steep stairs above a shop or restaurant. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. 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. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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.

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. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. 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 boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Plotted, not estimated. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.