Worktop templating in Hyde Park Estate

Yes. Hyde Park Estate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W2. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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.

Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. Victorian party walls and chimney-breast returns bow along their length, so the template plots the real line rather than assuming a straight one - the template picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. Two to three hours, once the units are in. Cobbled mews destroy trolley wheels and shake a slab - carry across the cobbles by hand rather than wheeling it, every time.

Blocks have underground parking with a 2m height barrier and a residents' lift, so the slab either comes down the ramp on a low-loader or gets walked from the street. Mews are cobbled and narrow with residents parked nose-in and no turning space. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. 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. 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. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. 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. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Units fitted, fixed and level first.

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. 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.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. 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 templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.