Worktop templating in Eastbrookend

Yes. Eastbrookend is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM10. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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.

Access is a question about the plot rather than the house: a narrow frontage between older buildings with nowhere obvious to stand a van. The template records that corner as it is, so the mitre closes tight instead of being cut to a theoretical 90 degrees. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. Newer houses out here have long shallow kitchen-diners, so the practical decision is where to put the single joint on a run that can exceed four metres.

Quieter edge-of-borough streets with off-street parking, cul-de-sacs and no through traffic, so the van sits outside the house without causing problems. 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. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop design & quotation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. 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.

Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. The laser plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Plotted, not estimated. Boards taped or skimmed and finished, units fixed back to the wall and levelled off, and the appliances on site - the wall must be at its final thickness on template day, so no tiler or splashback fitter gets ahead of the worktop. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.