Worktop templating in Uxbridge

Yes. Uxbridge is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB8. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. It is noted on the job sheet at template so the fitting crew inherit the answer rather than rediscovering it. 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 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. Victorian party walls and chimney-breast returns bow along their length, so the template plots the real line rather than assuming a straight one - the template picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. Anything inside the ring road needs an early-morning loading slot booked before the pedestrian zone closes to vehicles for the day.

Inside the ring road you have a one-way system and a pedestrianised High Street with timed loading only. The outer residential streets are easy with drives on most houses. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. 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. 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. 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. 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.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. Where the owner is not local, the decisions happen remotely, so photographs and a clear itemised drawing carry more weight than a showroom visit ever would. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.