Worktop templating in Little Venice

Yes. Little Venice is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W9. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. 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.

Conservation and listing conditions are common, which affects what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what stone goes on the units. 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan. Boat galleys need thin, light material and radiused edges cut to a hull curve - it is a template-and-fabricate job, nothing about it is standard kitchen dimensions.

Canal-side streets are narrow with permit bays and bridge weight and width limits at Warwick Avenue, and several buildings back onto the towpath with no vehicle access at all. Stucco villas have a raised front entrance with six or seven stone steps. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order. 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. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

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. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. 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. Plotted, not estimated. 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. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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.