Worktop templating in Cricklewood

Yes. Cricklewood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW2. It is run from the Watford side, covering Hertfordshire & North London. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. It is noted on the job sheet at template so the fitting crew inherit the answer rather than rediscovering it. Two hours is the realistic figure. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. Anything that has to stay accessible - stopcocks, gas meters, riser access panels - is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. First-floor maisonette kitchens are the recurring headache: the piece has to go up a domestic staircase with a half turn, so plan the joint before quoting a single length.

The Broadway is an A road with loading restrictions and bus lanes, so vans park in side streets and the crew carries. Mansion blocks vary wildly, some with a small original lift too shallow for a full slab and a stone staircase as the only alternative. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. That is part of what the visit is for. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. 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. 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. 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. Boxing and riser casings built, cased and finished to their final surface, units fixed and levelled, and building access, lift booking and porter arrangements agreed so both the template visit and the later fit can run. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. No stone is cut from a plan.