Worktop templating in Old Bexley

Yes. Old Bexley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA5. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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.

Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. The laser plots the bow along the back of the run, which is why a tape reading taken beforehand never matches. No stone is ever cut from a plan. In the old cottages, door and beam heights matter as much as widths — a slab on edge won't always clear the lintel.

A narrow conservation-area high street with a level crossing, restricted parking and no rear access to the older cottages, so deliveries have to be timed around the barrier and the school run. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. That is part of what the visit is for. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication and worktop replacement. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. The drawing leaves site complete. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. The laser 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. No stone is cut from a plan.