Worktop templating in Millwall

Yes. Millwall is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. 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. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. 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.

These buildings have firm rules about what can be propped open, left in a lobby or carried through the residents entrance. The template records that corner as it is, so the mitre closes tight instead of being cut to a theoretical 90 degrees. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. Structural columns in the middle of opened-up flats are common, and a top that has to notch round one needs the column dimensions taken at template, not from a plan.

Blocks sit around the dock edge with restricted vehicle access to the water side, meaning the van parks at the road frontage and the slab is walked round the dock path. Many buildings are gated with a single narrow lift and a step-up threshold at the lobby door. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. 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 replacement and worktop installation. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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.

A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. 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. Boards taped or skimmed and finished, units fixed back to the wall and levelled off, and the appliances on site - the wall must be at its final thickness on template day, so no tiler or splashback fitter gets ahead of the worktop. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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.