Worktop templating in Crayford

Yes. Crayford 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. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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.

Steel columns and downstands land where the frame put them, which is frequently in the middle of what would otherwise be a clean run. Exposed brick and steel is the whole job here: the brick face is not a flat plane, it moves in and out over its height and along its length, so the scribe is taken at the exact height the worktop will sit rather than off the wall generally. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. The old works terraces have very low ceilings in the rear addition — check head height over the run before specifying tall upstands or a splashback.

The town is split by the main road and the river, with a steep hill up from the high street and terraced streets parked nose-to-tail; the riverside blocks have their own gated parking. 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. 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. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Appliances on site, not on order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order.

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. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. 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.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. 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. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.