Worktop templating in Regent's Park

Yes. Regent's Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW1. It is run from the Watford side, covering Hertfordshire & North London. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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.

Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. 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 Nash terraces you are working under listed consent against vaulted, uneven basement walls where nothing is square, so template on site and expect a scribe on every back edge.

The Outer Circle has strict waiting restrictions and no loading in front of the terraces, so access to the listed houses is by an area stair or a rear service entrance. The post-war estate has its own internal roads and lifts, which is a completely different set of rules on the same day. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. The laser records it along with everything else. 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 design & quotation and worktop installation. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Appliances on site, not on order. 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. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first.

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. 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.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the laser plots the intermediate points. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.