Worktop templating in Green Street

Yes. Green Street is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E7, E13. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. 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. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. 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 stair from the street is narrow with a tight turn at the top, which caps piece length well below anything the run itself needs. Runs commonly finish at a doorway, and the architrave and skirting stand proud of the plaster, so the end of the top is notched or stopped on the drawing. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. Above-shop flats mean carrying stone past a live business, so boards down and a planned route matter more than the fit itself.

The shopping street is busy from morning to evening with loading bans and enforcement cameras, so realistically it is an early start or a bank holiday. Access to the flats is through a shared side door between shopfronts, up a single narrow flight with a 90-degree turn, so nothing over about 2.2m gets up in one piece. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. 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.

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. 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 corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Plotted, not estimated. Units fixed, packed level and pushed as far back as the leaning wall allows, walls made good to final thickness with tiling left until after the worktop, and the sink, tap and hob on site so cut-outs are set from the real items. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. No stone is cut from a plan.