Worktop templating in Gascoigne

Yes. Gascoigne is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG11. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. 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.

Concrete panel walls bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and the back edge is cut to follow it. Concrete and dense block walls in ex-council stock cannot be chased back or packed out to suit, so the template takes the wall exactly as it is and the stone carries the scribe. Two to three hours, once the units are in. Fire doors and 90-degree landings are the real limit on flat jobs here, so lengths are cut to what will physically turn on the landing.

Flats above ground level throughout, so it is lifts, communal stairs, narrow landings and fire doors, with delivery times often restricted by the managing agent. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. The laser records it along with everything else. 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. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. 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.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. Every base unit fixed to the wall, packed and levelled with the laser, and any dry-lining or patching completed - the template reads the wall face it is given, so that has to be the finished face. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. No stone is cut from a plan.