Reception counters and desks in Barbican

Yes. Barbican is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2Y. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. The counter is unwrapped inside the building, never at the kerb. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Post-war terraces have a short straight hall to the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than the houses they replaced. The parades behind terraces of this period carry pharmacies, minicab offices, takeaways and small surgeries, and their counters are the hardest-used stone we fit. The knee recess is argued over hardest where the floor is shallowest. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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 scribe is cut in the shop, eased on site, and no further.

The lift is only part of the route, and the corridor from the lobby to the flat door often holds a tighter turn than the car does. 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. Two heights means two carries, and the low one is not the difficult one. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. A frontage with no stopping is a fitting slot, not a fitting day.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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. Card reader positions come from the operator, not the architect.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. 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 sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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. Stone will not straighten joinery, and it will not forgive it either. Tell us whether there is rear access off a service road, and send the carcass dimensions with the till, terminal and cable positions marked on them. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. 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 finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Shelf depth is set by the knee space underneath it.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The front edge runs straight whatever the wall behind it does.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. A stub wall divides the kitchen from the back lobby, and it rarely stayed where the original drawing put it. Two working surfaces at two heights, a return between them and clear knee space under the lower one: that is the shape almost every counter ends up being, whatever the front elevation promised. The height that matters most is the low one.

Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. The apertures for cable and card readers are what changes between one desk and the next, and every change is a fresh drawing rather than a variation. Two desks on one site still take two templates.