Worktop templating in Riddlesdown

Yes. Riddlesdown is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR8. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. It is noted on the job sheet at template so the fitting crew inherit the answer rather than rediscovering it. 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 classic arrangement is the original back room with a later extension bolted onto it, so the kitchen is two ages of building in one room. 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. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. Dead-end hillside roads mean reversing a loaded van out, so we take the smaller vehicle here and make two trips rather than one.

Narrow hillside roads with parking on both sides and short steep drives, plus the railway cutting means several streets are dead ends with no turning space for a long van. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. The template records it along with everything else.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. 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.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.