What Actually Happens When We Template Your Kitchen

Written by the Al Jory Marble team, fabricators and installers based in Crestwood, Illinois.

Templating is the hour that decides whether your countertops fit. Everything after it is execution. If the template is right, the tops drop into place and the installation is boring in the best way. If the template is wrong, you find out on installation day, in your kitchen, with a crew standing there holding a piece of stone that does not sit flat.

Most homeowners have never watched a template happen and are not sure what we are doing or why it takes as long as it does. Here is the whole appointment, start to finish.

Before we arrive: the cabinets have to be finished

We template after cabinets are installed, secured, and leveled. Not before. This is the single most common scheduling conflict we run into, and it is worth understanding why we are firm about it.

A countertop is cut to the exact outline of what it sits on. If a base cabinet shifts half an inch after we template, the overhang changes, the sink cutout moves relative to the cabinet opening, and the backsplash gap opens up on one end. Half an inch is nothing during cabinet installation and everything on a finished stone edge.

So the checklist before we come out is short but firm. Cabinets set, shimmed, and fastened. Any filler pieces installed. Appliances on site or at minimum the exact model numbers available, because a slide-in range and a freestanding range need different cutouts. Sink and faucet on site if you have already bought them. Nothing sitting on top of the cabinets.

If you are mid-remodel and the schedule is tight, call us anyway and we will tell you honestly whether the space is ready. We would rather have that conversation on the phone than send a crew out for nothing.

The first ten minutes are conversation, not measurement

Before anything gets measured, we walk the kitchen with you and talk through decisions that have to be made now rather than later. Some of these catch people off guard because they assumed the choices were already settled.

Which direction does the sink face and how far is it set back from the front edge. Where does the faucet go, and is there a soap dispenser or a filtered water tap going in beside it. How much overhang do you want on the island seating side, and how many people are actually sitting there. Which edge profile do you want, and do you want the same profile on the island as on the perimeter. Where should the range hood cutout land relative to the backsplash.

These are not upsell questions. They change the cut file. A four inch seating overhang and a twelve inch seating overhang are different structural problems, and the second one needs support brackets specified before the slab is cut.

Then we measure the room that exists

This is where templating stops being ordinary measuring. We are not recording the dimensions from your plans. We are recording the room as it was actually built, with all of its accumulated imperfections.

Walls are almost never straight. In older Chicago and suburban housing stock they bow, they lean, and they meet at corners that are a degree or two off square. Floors settle unevenly, which means a cabinet run that was level when it was installed may not be level now. Drywall thickness varies where patches were made. A wall that reads as one flat plane to the eye can easily wander three quarters of an inch across a ten foot run.

If we cut a countertop to a straight line and the wall is not straight, you get a gap. Sometimes a gap you can hide behind a backsplash and sometimes a gap you cannot. So we capture the actual profile of the wall, corner angles, out of square conditions, and any bumps or bows that the stone will have to accommodate.

We also check whether the cabinets themselves are level. If they are off, we note it, because a large stone top that is set on an uneven base either rocks or has to be shimmed, and shimming is far easier to plan for than to improvise.

What we look at that has nothing to do with the countertop

Part of the template visit is a survey of everything between our truck and your kitchen. This is the part homeowners never expect and the part that most often changes how a job gets fabricated.

We measure the doorway widths, the turns in the hallway, the stairwell if there is one, the height of the landing, and whether a slab can physically get from the street into the room. A full slab is heavy and it does not bend. In a Chicago walk-up or a two flat this frequently determines where the seam goes, because a piece that cannot make the turn at the landing has to be cut into two pieces that can.

We would much rather make that decision in our shop, with intention, than discover it on installation day. There is a whole separate story in how we get slabs into difficult buildings if you are curious about the logistics.

How the measurement actually gets recorded

Modern templating is digital. Rather than building a physical template out of strips of wood or plastic, we record the space electronically, which produces a file that goes straight to the saw. The advantage is accuracy and repeatability. The measurement that comes off your kitchen is the measurement the machine cuts to, with no transcription in between.

That file becomes the layout drawing. We use it to map where each piece falls on the slab, where the seams land, and how the veining runs across the finished kitchen. If you want to understand how much thought goes into that, we wrote about how we decide where seams go separately.

What you should ask us while we are standing there

The template appointment is the best chance you will have to ask questions with someone who is looking at your actual kitchen. A few worth raising.

• Where will the seams be, and will I see them from the doorway.
• Is my overhang going to need support brackets, and are they included.
• Will my existing sink work with the new top, or does it need replacing.
• Is anything about my walls or cabinets going to show once the stone is on.
• What is the realistic date the tops go in, not the earliest possible date.

On that last one, we will give you the honest answer. Fabrication generally runs one to two weeks depending on the material and what else is in the shop. We would rather set a date we can hold than a date that sounds good on the phone.

What happens next

After the template, the file goes to the shop and your slab gets laid out. We walk through that whole process in what happens to your slab in our shop, from layout to polishing.

From your side, the kitchen sits without countertops for a stretch, which is the least fun part of any remodel. Plan for it. Set up a temporary work surface, keep the sink connection accessible, and know that on most residential jobs the actual countertop installation is a single day.

Why we do the template ourselves

At Al Jory Marble the person who templates your kitchen works for the same shop that cuts the slab and the same company that installs it. There is no handoff, no translation between companies, and no gap where information gets lost.

That matters more than it sounds like it should. When a fabricator subcontracts measurement or installation, every judgment call made at the template has to survive being written down and passed along. When one team carries the job start to finish, the person who noticed that the wall bows near the window is the same person who accounts for it at the saw.

We template kitchens across Chicagoland, from Orland Park and Joliet to Naperville and Downers Grove. If you are getting close to the cabinet stage and want to talk through timing, call us at (708) 362-7674 and we will tell you when to schedule the measure.