Worktop templating in St John's Wood

Yes. St John's Wood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW8. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. Streets near a ground or a venue have restrictions that come and go with the fixture list rather than with the time of day. 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.

Conservation and listing conditions are common, which affects what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what stone goes on the units. One datum for the whole room, because a floor that falls end to end shows as a step between island and perimeter. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. Big islands in the villas usually exceed what four men can carry through the house - check whether the garden doors are still off, because going in through the rear is far easier than round the stair.

Leasehold and estate consents govern the villas, and the blocks impose porter-controlled access, weekday-only works hours and lift protection. Match and event days at Lord's suspend bays and gridlock the roads around the ground, which needs checking when booking a fitting date. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order.

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.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Plotted, not estimated. All runs and the island carcass fixed down and levelled to one datum, with the sink, tap and hob on site - an island cannot be templated while it is still loose or sitting on packers. Access in a tenanted flat depends on the tenant, so the template and fitting dates are agreed with whoever actually holds the keys. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.