Worktop templating in Squirrels Heath

Yes. Squirrels Heath is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM2, RM11. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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.

The kitchen is usually a rear room extended into the garden, with the original external wall now standing inside the run. 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan. Where a side extension has swallowed the passage, the only way in is through the house, so we check hallway width and door swings before agreeing a single-piece top.

Good driveway provision and reasonably wide roads, though station-side streets fill with commuter cars during the day and the side extensions themselves have removed a lot of the old side access routes. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. 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. 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. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Units fitted, fixed and level first.

Three runs means two internal corners, and each corner is a decision about mitre or butt joint before anything is nested. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. 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.

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. Plotted, not estimated. 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. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Appliances on site, not on order.