Worktop templating in Hampstead Garden Suburb

Yes. Hampstead Garden Suburb is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW11, N2. It is run from the Watford side, covering Hertfordshire & North London. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. 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.

A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. Alcoves either side of the breast are rarely the same width and rarely parallel, so each one is templated as its own piece with its own scribe. Two to three hours, once the units are in. You work around what is already there in the Suburb, because the things that would normally be taken out to get a slab in, a window, a door frame, a fence panel, are exactly the things that are controlled.

Narrow lanes and closes, grass verges that vans are not welcome on, front paths through planted gardens, and hedges and gates the Trust will not allow to be temporarily removed. Off-street parking is limited and the carry from a legal stopping point is often long. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. The laser records it along with everything else. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop design & quotation and worktop fabrication. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Appliances on site, not on order.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. 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.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. Units fixed and packed level over the sloping floor, walls replastered and dry at their final thickness (tiling and splashbacks go on after the worktop, never before), and the sink, tap and hob physically on site, with a Belfast sink built in and set at its finished height. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. No stone is cut from a plan.