Reception counters and desks in Bank

Yes. Bank is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2R, EC3V. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Service yards want a name and a time, given a week out. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Handover kitchens are fitted with the cheapest carcass the specification allowed, and cam-lock chipboard boxes are what a stone top has to sit on. The commercial work in a neighbourhood of new blocks is concierge desks and ground-floor fit-outs: a managed lobby needing a counter that works as a post point and a security position at once, or a shell unit turned into a dental practice or a clinic. Protected finishes decide the fixings before the drawing is finished. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. 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. The template is taken to the carcass as built.

Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. 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. Trestles go up in the lobby before anything is unwrapped. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. The counter is unwrapped inside the building, never at the kerb.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Every change of plane is a join waiting to be placed well. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. What a counter is scribed to is the joiner's carcass rather than the plaster, which is why it is templated after the carcass is fixed and never before. Twist in a carcass shows first at the transaction shelf. Send the lift car internal dimensions and the loading bay rules with the carcass dimensions, and have the operator mark where the payment terminal and cable grommets really go. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. Where a managing agent has to approve the work, the drawing goes out in a form they can sign without ever standing in the lobby. Sign-off happens before nesting, never after it.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. An external corner on a counter is seen from both sides at once, so it is mitred rather than butted and the pattern is carried round it. Shelf depth is set by the knee space underneath it.

Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. Where the front is curved the top is cut on a waterjet, and the carcass has to be built to the same radius rather than close to it. The longest piece is decided before the shape is finalised.

Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A long counter magnifies every millimetre the carcass is out.

An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Underfloor heating in the screed means nothing is fixed into the floor, so an island is anchored to the carcasses alone. A neighbourhood of new blocks means concierge desks: a managed lobby with a counter working as a post point and a security position at the same time. A desk seen from a whole floor is finished on every edge.