Worktop templating in Tollington

Yes. Tollington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N4, N7. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. Two hours is the realistic figure. 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan. A knock-through joins two rooms with different ceiling heights and wall finishes, so batch-match the slabs and set your level off the longer span rather than the shorter one.

The streets between Hornsey Road and Seven Sisters Road are narrow, one-way in places and permit-only, while the main roads either side carry buses with loading limits. Straight halls with a rear door make the carry manageable once the van is parked. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop replacement. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Appliances on site, not on order. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. 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.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Plotted, not estimated. 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. No stone is cut from a plan.