Worktop templating in St Ann's

Yes. St Ann's is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N15. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. 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.

The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. 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. Knock-throughs in this stock usually leave a 100mm nib at the chimney breast, and the top has to be scribed round it - it is the single most common re-cut on these jobs.

Residential streets are permit-controlled and narrow, and several have modal filters and planters that stop you driving straight through - check the route before the day rather than relying on a satnav. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. 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. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

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. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. One datum for the whole room. 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. 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.