Worktop templating in Haydons Road

Yes. Haydons Road is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW19. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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.

Cornice, picture rails and deep skirting survive in converted rooms, so the run stands off the wall and the back edge follows the units rather than the plaster. The laser plots the bow along the back of the run, which is why a tape reading taken beforehand never matches. Two to three hours, once the units are in. With no forecourt there is nowhere to set a slab down between van and door, so anything wider than the hall has to be carried in one continuous move — plan the pair and the route before unloading.

Houses front directly onto the pavement with no forecourt, the streets are permit-controlled and narrow, and the railway line limits through routes so vans have to approach from the right end. Internal halls are around 850mm with a sharp turn at the foot of the stairs. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. 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 notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. Plotted, not estimated. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. No stone is cut from a plan.