Worktop templating in Surrey Quays

Yes. Surrey Quays is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE16. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. 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.

An infill house is built to modern standards on an old plot, so the room is square even though the site around it is not. The template records that corner as it is, so the mitre closes tight instead of being cut to a theoretical 90 degrees. No stone is ever cut from a plan. These kitchens were built to a budget with 600mm carcasses that have sagged, so the units usually need packing and levelling before a stone top goes anywhere near them.

Estate roads loop and dead-end around the water, so satnav puts you on the wrong side of a dock; most houses have an allocated bay or an integral garage forecourt within carrying distance of the door. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. 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.

Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. The laser 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. Boards taped or skimmed and finished, units fixed back to the wall and levelled off, and the appliances on site - the wall must be at its final thickness on template day, so no tiler or splashback fitter gets ahead of the worktop. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Appliances on site, not on order.