Reception counters and desks in Barons Court

Yes. Barons Court is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Whoever holds the lease usually holds the loading bay. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The flats are stacked identically, so the kitchen above sits directly over this one and its waste passes through the same boxing. A block of this age carries a porter's desk in the entrance hall, and that hall is usually a protected interior with panelling, an original floor and finishes nobody is allowed to fix into. A porter's desk stands on its own carcass, fixed into nothing original. 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 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 carcass is levelled before the top is ever offered up.

Every flight adds a set of handling movements, and handling is where stone gets damaged, so a fourth-floor walk-up is priced by the flight rather than by the metre. 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. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. The longest counter piece decides the swing radius outside.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Reception work is booked around the building staying open. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. 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.

Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. 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. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

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. 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. A shelf over a knee recess cannot be packed, so it is cut true. Measure the lift car internally, photograph the stair turn and the hall, and confirm with the managing agent what may and may not be fixed into. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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. Somebody has to book the lift, and it is rarely the receptionist.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. That makes the counter a freestanding thing on its own carcass, drawn to clear the skirting rather than to sit against it, with the fixings agreed before the drawing is finished. Public counters are specified for wear at the front edge.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Sintered stone at 12mm changes what a staircase can take, because the same run arrives at roughly half the weight of the granite equivalent. 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. Protection stays down until the last piece is bedded.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of it. A lobby is one of the few places a piece can be staged, so the counter comes in early and stands on trestles until the carcass is ready for it. A knee recess is an opening, and an opening weakens a piece in transit.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. The public side and the staff side take different details.