Worktop templating in Stoke Newington

Yes. Stoke Newington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N16. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. 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.

Where the side return has been filled in, the old external wall is now an internal one and still carries its render, its gutter line and its old fixings. Victorian party walls and chimney-breast returns bow along their length, so the template plots the real line rather than assuming a straight one - the laser picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. No stone is ever cut from a plan. Long side-return runs usually need a join, so place it at a cabinet break and batch-match, because an island and a 4m run cut from different blocks will not look right in this much daylight.

Church Street is narrow, busy and loading-restricted, and the surrounding streets are permit-only with several filtered junctions. Terraces are set behind small front gardens with a few steps, and halls run straight through to the rear, which helps the carry considerably. 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. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. 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 design & quotation. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order.

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. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. 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.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. The laser plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. Units fixed and packed level over the sloping floor, walls replastered and dry at their final thickness (tiling and splashbacks go on after the worktop, never before), and the sink, tap and hob physically on site, with a Belfast sink built in and set at its finished height. 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 template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come.