Worktop templating in Forest Hill

Yes. Forest Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE23. 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. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. Two hours is the realistic figure. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original walls are thick, lime-plastered and rarely straight, which makes dry-laying and scribing the bulk of the fitting day. One datum for the whole room, because a floor that falls end to end shows as a step between island and perimeter. No stone is ever cut from a plan. The gradient is the constraint — check the van can hold the hill outside the house before planning the offload.

Very steep roads on both sides of the valley, tight bends and limited parking near the station; a lot of houses sit above the road behind long flights of steps with the garden well below. 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. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop fabrication. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Units fitted, fixed and level first. 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. 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.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. Real angles, not plan angles. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. The laser 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. All runs and the island carcass fixed down and levelled to one datum, with the sink, tap and hob on site - an island cannot be templated while it is still loose or sitting on packers. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.