Worktop templating in Herne Hill

Yes. Herne Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE24. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. 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. It is noted on the job sheet at template so the fitting crew inherit the answer rather than rediscovering it. 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.

Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. The island is templated for its overhang, its support and the position of the hob or sink within it, with sockets and any pop-up left where they will genuinely be. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. These are big rooms with big islands, so the carry through the hall and out to the rear is the deciding factor, measure the narrowest point on that route before agreeing a single-piece island.

The streets have front gardens and gate posts that narrow the approach, and permit parking is enforced. The area floods for events at the park and the railway bridge by the station is a bottleneck for anything arriving from the north. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The template records it along with everything else.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop design & quotation. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. 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. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. Real angles, not plan angles. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. 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. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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.