Worktop templating in Knight's Hill

Yes. Knight's Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE27. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Half-landings mean the back of the house sits at a slightly different level from the front, and a knocked-through kitchen crosses that line. 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. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. On housing-association refits the carcasses are supplied to a fixed spec, so the top has to work to their unit heights and cutout positions rather than to what suits the stone.

Estate sections have parking courts set back from the entrances and stair-only access in the low-rise blocks, while the semis have driveways and easy approaches. Hilly ground means some parking bays sit well below the front doors they serve. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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.

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. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. 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.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. No stone is cut from a plan.