Worktop templating in Northwick Park

Yes. Northwick Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA1, HA3. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. 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.

The original kitchen was a small service room, so what is there now is a knock-through and the junction between the two floors is rarely level. 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan. Rental refits want the fewest possible visits, so template, fabricate and fit needs sequencing tightly around tenancy change dates.

Flat, wide roads with drives on the houses; the flat blocks have communal entrances, half-landings and generally no lift, which limits piece size to what two people can turn on a stair. 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. The template records it along with everything else.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. 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 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. 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.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. 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. A let property is specified for durability and for a fixed window, and both of those are legitimate reasons to choose differently. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.