Worktop templating in Rayners Lane

Yes. Rayners Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA2, HA5. It is run from the Watford side, covering Hertfordshire & North London. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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.

Inter-war purpose-built blocks have curved external walls and steel windows, so a run along an outside wall is following a genuine curve rather than a bow. Boxing depth is taken at worktop height at several points, because measuring it low down is why a top will not sit back. Two to three hours, once the units are in. Garage-conversion runs cross an old wall line and a change in floor construction, so check for a step in the base unit heights before templating a continuous top.

Straight suburban roads with drives, though a converted garage removes the parking space and pushes the van to the kerb. Flats over the Art Deco parades are reached by a communal stair from the rear service yard. 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. 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 installation. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. 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. One datum for the whole room. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the laser plots the intermediate points. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. Boxing and riser casings built, cased and finished to their final surface, units fixed and levelled, and building access, lift booking and porter arrangements agreed so both the template visit and the later fit can run. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Appliances on site, not on order.