Worktop templating in Hanger Hill

Yes. Hanger Hill 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. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. 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.

Handmade brick and lime plaster move visibly along a run, and a straight-cut back edge shows it immediately. 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 walk-up blocks have tight stair turns with a low soffit, so anything over 2.4m has to be jointed simply to get it up to the flat.

The Hanger Lane gyratory and the A40 dominate the approach. The garden estate has communal courts, controlled parking and low-rise blocks with no lifts. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. 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 replacement. 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. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first.

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. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. 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.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. 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. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. No stone is cut from a plan.