Worktop templating in Northwood

Yes. Northwood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA6. It is run from the High Wycombe side, covering Buckinghamshire & Berkshire. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. 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.

Houses of this period came with generous garages and utility rooms, so a second short run of stone is often part of the same job. Where the room has been knocked through to the dining room or opened into a later extension, the two floors rarely sit at the same level and the laser has to be shot across the whole opening from one datum. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn. Bookmatching is the expectation here, so slab selection and a dry lay at the yard happen before a single cut is made.

Private drives, electric gates and deep gravel. The difficulty is ground surface and gradient rather than parking, and some properties need track boards laid to reach the door. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. 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. Appliances on site, not on order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. 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.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. All base units in, including anything standing on the later extension slab, walls skimmed to final thickness, and the sink, tap and hob delivered so cut-outs and tap centres are set from the actual items. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.