Reception counters and desks in Abbey Wood

Yes. Abbey Wood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE2. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. The tail lift needs pavement, not simply a space. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A detached house of this age has a drive, a side path and a back door, so access is rarely the constraint and the design can follow the room. Practices in this stock are usually converted houses on or behind an interwar parade: a dental surgery, a veterinary practice or a small office with its reception in what was the front room. The knee recess is argued over hardest where the floor is shallowest. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. A counter is worse off than a kitchen here, because it usually stands clear of the wall and has nothing behind it to hide a gap. A long counter magnifies every millimetre the carcass is out.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. A counter top is one long piece with no run of cabinets to break it, so the route decides the join count before the sightlines get a vote. Working out of hours costs less than a chipped counter does. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Outside opening hours is usually when the kerb is free.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop templating. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. A desk somebody sits at all day is specified for wear. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Where an operator is fitting out several receptions, the counters come off one slab run so the desks read as a set rather than as neighbours. Card reader positions come from the operator, not the architect.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. A shallow shelf still needs a support run of its own. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The scribe is cut in the shop, eased on site, and no further. Confirm whether the reception is at ground level or up the stair, and send the carcass drawing with the chimney breast and any bay recorded on it. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. The same split runs through commercial property: a landlord fitting out a shell and a tenant fitting out their own reception want different things from one counter. Reception fit-outs answer to a lease as much as to a drawing.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. A serving hatch through to the dining room is common, and closing one up leaves a panel of newer wall exactly where the run passes. A reception counter answers to the building it stands in more than to the drawing, because it is fabricated to a carcass somebody else has already built and fixed. Reception work is quiet work, done to a building already open.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. The kitchen is usually a rear room extended into the garden, with the original external wall now standing inside the run. Districts built out between the wars have parades of their own, and the practices in them run to a counter with a waiting room behind it and a filing run under the shelf. Protected finishes decide the fixings before the drawing is finished.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. Stone will not straighten joinery, and it will not forgive it either.

If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. 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. A fit-out programme puts the counter last, behind the joiner and the electrician, which is exactly when the least time is left to template it. Two desks on one site still take two templates.