Worktop templating in Maryland

Yes. Maryland is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E15. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. 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. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. 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.

Cornice, picture rails and deep skirting survive in converted rooms, so the run stands off the wall and the back edge follows the units rather than the plaster. 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. Conversion flats here often have the sink on an external wall with a soil pipe boxed behind it, so the back scribe has to allow for the boxing.

Streets are tight, terraced and permit-controlled, with parking pressure from the station making a kerbside space near the door unlikely. Flats above the shops on the main parade have a shared side entrance and a straight steep stair with no turning space at the top. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. 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.

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. 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.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. 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.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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. 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. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.