Worktop templating in Old Coulsdon

Yes. Old Coulsdon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR5. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Wide doorways and level thresholds mean full-length pieces go in whole and the join count comes down to slab length alone. The typical 1930s kitchen sits at the back with a low window over the sink run, so the template records the exact sill height above the units to settle whether an upstand fits or the stone has to die into a window board. No stone is ever cut from a plan. Bungalow and single-storey work here means no stairs, so the limiting factor is doorway width rather than piece length, and internal doors often have to come off their hinges.

Cul-de-sacs with turning heads and generous drives make loading easy, but the area sits at the top of a long climb, and in cold weather the approach roads are the first to ice. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. 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.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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. All base units in, including anything standing on the later extension slab, walls skimmed to final thickness, and the sink, tap and hob delivered so cut-outs and tap centres are set from the actual items. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.