Worktop templating in Whetstone

Yes. Whetstone is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N20. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. 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.

These blocks were built with a lift from new, which will usually take a worktop and almost never takes a full-length island piece. Anything that has to stay accessible - stopcocks, gas meters, riser access panels - is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. Retirement blocks often have restricted working hours and no drilling before nine, so a wet-cut on site is usually not an option and pieces must arrive finished.

The High Road is a red route with almost no stopping, so vans work from side streets; the flat blocks have parking courts and lifts, but many of the older ones have lifts too small for a full-length slab. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. 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 boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. The template 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. Boxing and riser casings built, cased and finished to their final surface, units fixed and levelled, and building access, lift booking and porter arrangements agreed so both the template visit and the later fit can run. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.