Worktop templating in Upper Holloway

Yes. Upper Holloway is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N19. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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.

Cornice, picture rails and deep skirting survive in converted rooms, so the run stands off the wall and the back edge follows the units rather than the plaster. The template plots the bow along the back of the run, which is why a tape reading taken beforehand never matches. Two to three hours, once the units are in. Where the kitchen floor drops below the hall, agree the finished worktop height with the client early, because the split level surprises people once the units are in.

Steep streets running off Junction Road and Holloway Road with permit bays and a narrow carriageway, and the gradient makes trolley work awkward so A-frames need two people throughout. Front steps followed by an internal step down into the kitchen is the usual sequence. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. 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.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.