Worktop templating in Barnes Cray

Yes. Barnes Cray is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA1. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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.

Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. The scribe is taken at the exact height the stone will sit, because the brick face changes over its own height. No stone is ever cut from a plan. Bathrooms and boilers off the kitchen put pipework in the run — expect notching and awkward cut-outs behind the units.

Flat riverside ground with wide but frequently blocked estate roads and industrial traffic; parking is on-street and generally available. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. That is part of what the visit is for. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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 notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. The laser plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. Units fixed and levelled, all steelwork and brick cleaned, sealed and finished, and any boarded sections completed to final thickness so the template picks up the surface the stone will actually meet. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.