Worktop templating in Plumstead

Yes. Plumstead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE18. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. 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.

Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. Alcoves either side of the breast are rarely the same width and rarely parallel, so each one is templated as its own piece with its own scribe. Two to three hours, once the units are in. Old lath-and-plaster and soft brick mean scribing to bowed walls is normal; assume the back wall is out by 15mm over 3m.

Steep hillside streets with permit parking and no driveways, plus long flights of front steps on the upper roads, the carry is usually uphill and through the house rather than round the side. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. 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. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. 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 stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. 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.