Worktop templating in Ealing Common

Yes. Ealing Common is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. 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.

Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. Long perimeter runs and an island mean level has to hold across the whole room, so the templater sets a single datum and works every run and the island off it rather than levelling each wall in isolation. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. Those front steps mean every piece gets lifted over three or four risers, which is worth two extra hands rather than trying it with one.

Streets around the common are residents-only permit bays. Villas have deep front paths and a flight of steps up to a raised ground floor, and driveways are rare. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. The template records it along with everything else.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop design & quotation. 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. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Appliances on site, not on order.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. 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.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. All runs and the island carcass fixed down and levelled to one datum, with the sink, tap and hob on site - an island cannot be templated while it is still loose or sitting on packers. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. No stone is cut from a plan.