Worktop templating in Liverpool Street

Yes. Liverpool Street is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2M. It is worked on our the City run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. It is noted on the job sheet at template so the fitting crew inherit the answer rather than rediscovering it. 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.

External walls are thick and the run under the window sits in a deep reveal that has to be templated rather than assumed square. Mansion-block kitchens usually have a serviced riser or boxed pipework somewhere in the run, and the boxing is rarely the same depth from one end to the other, so the template takes the depth at worktop height at several points rather than one reading. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. Long thin kitchens in narrow buildings mean the run is easy and the stair is not - build the joints around the landing pivot, not the wall length.

Station-side streets carry very heavy pedestrian flow all day and several approach lanes are pedestrianised or too narrow for a Luton, so the van stops further out than you would like. Entrances are frequently a single door in a narrow court with a straight steep stair and no lift, which caps piece length hard at what two people can pivot on a landing. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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.

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. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. 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.

Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Plotted, not estimated. Boxing and riser casings built, cased and finished to their final surface, units fixed and levelled, and building access, lift booking and porter arrangements agreed so both the template visit and the later fit can run. 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. No stone is cut from a plan.