Reception counters and desks in Barnes Cray

Yes. Barnes Cray is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Where the goods entrance is round the back, the carry is priced from there. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. Converted warehouses hold the studio, agency and workspace receptions, and a counter in one sits in open floor with nothing behind it. A pharmacy counter is two heights before anybody draws it. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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. The carcass is levelled before the top is ever offered up.

A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. 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. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. An early slot buys an empty street and an empty lobby at once.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop templating. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. 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. 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. A desk somebody sits at all day is specified for wear. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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 galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Every change of plane is a join waiting to be placed well. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A shelf over a knee recess cannot be packed, so it is cut true. Send the goods lift dimensions and the carry route from the loading area, and confirm whether the counter stands clear of the walls or returns into one. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. 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. The serving height comes from the standard, not from the landlord.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. The back return follows the wall as the wall leans.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Concierge buildings want the goods entrance, a booked lift and proof of insurance, all of which is straightforward when it is asked for a week out. The lower transaction shelf is short and easily handled; it is the upper counter that has to be walked in on edge and turned at every corner. The transaction shelf goes almost anywhere the upper top will not.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Steel columns and downstands land where the frame put them, which is frequently in the middle of what would otherwise be a clean run. That means every edge is finished and the back of the counter is as visible as the front, so all four sides take the same profile and the same polish rather than only the public face. Marketing suites get a permanent counter for a temporary lobby.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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.