Worktop templating in Falconwood

Yes. Falconwood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA16, SE9. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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.

The chimney breast in the corner has usually been left in place, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends. 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 whole opening has to be shot across from one datum. No stone is ever cut from a plan. The original attached garages give something rare round here, a level, covered spot to set up and cut on site.

Wide crescents and cul-de-sacs with garages and drives on almost every plot; the railway and the main road cutting across the area limit through routes more than parking does. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. 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.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. The template 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. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.