Worktop templating in Tower Hill

Yes. Tower Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC3N. It is worked on our the City run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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 structure is a concrete or steel frame, so what looks like a wall is often a partition and what looks like a partition is often a column. The room is square and the plasterboard is not, so the internal corner is recorded as it is rather than as ninety degrees. No stone is ever cut from a plan. Nothing in the Georgian stock is square or level, so template with a digital arm and expect to scribe every back edge rather than cutting to a drawing.

Tourist footfall around the Tower is constant and the surrounding roads carry heavy through traffic with no stopping, so loading has to be on the back streets in an off-peak window. Georgian properties have narrow original doors and steep straight stairs with a tight half-landing, and the listing means no removal of joinery to get a piece through. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The template records it along with everything else.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement and worktop installation.

Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. 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.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Plotted, not estimated. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.