Worktop templating in Custom House

Yes. Custom House is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E16. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

An inter-war terrace is wider than a Victorian one and shallower than a semi, so the kitchen is a compact square room rather than a galley. Where the room has been knocked through to the dining room or opened into a later extension, the two floors rarely sit at the same level and the laser has to be shot across the whole opening from one datum. No stone is ever cut from a plan. Site hoardings regularly block the road you templated from, so leave a bit of slack in the delivery window for a diverted approach.

Ongoing regeneration means hoardings, closed roads and diverted footways that change month to month, so the route needs checking on the day rather than from a map. Where houses survive there is decent kerb space and level front access, which makes those the straightforward jobs. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. 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.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. The laser plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Plotted, not estimated. All base units in, including anything standing on the later extension slab, walls skimmed to final thickness, and the sink, tap and hob delivered so cut-outs and tap centres are set from the actual items. 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. No stone is cut from a plan.