Worktop templating in St Katharine Docks

Yes. St Katharine Docks is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1W. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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.

Walls are dense in-situ concrete or blockwork with a thin skim, which will not be chased back and will not take a plasterboard fixing. Unit height is the other issue: legs sit on an uneven screed or hard concrete with no give, so the laser reads the top of every carcass rather than assuming they share a height. No stone is ever cut from a plan. Barrier and dwell-time limits mean the slab comes off the van in one go, so the crew and the route need to be sorted before it arrives.

The estate is privately managed with barrier-controlled vehicle entry, so the van needs booking in and a time-limited pass to reach the block door. Once inside it is a flat, level route across paved quayside, but lifts are small 1970s cars and some blocks route deliveries through a basement service corridor. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. 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. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order. 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. Appliances on site, not on order.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. 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.

Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. The laser plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Plotted, not estimated. Every base unit fixed to the wall, packed and levelled with the laser, and any dry-lining or patching completed - the template reads the wall face it is given, so that has to be the finished face. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. No stone is cut from a plan.