Worktop templating in Sipson

Yes. Sipson is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB7. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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.

A villa cut into flats leaves kitchens in rooms that were never kitchens, with services run to wherever they could physically be made to reach. Victorian party walls and chimney-breast returns bow along their length, so the template plots the real line rather than assuming a straight one - the template picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. Two to three hours, once the units are in. Rental turnover drives the schedule, so it is template and fit inside the same changeover week or the job does not happen at all.

Sipson Road and Sipson Lane are narrow and carry constant airport traffic, and on-street space competes with people parking for the airport. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. That is part of what the visit is for.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. 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.

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. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. 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. Quartz is the sensible default in a rental: nothing to seal, nothing to maintain, and nothing an incoming tenant needs briefing on. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.