Reception counters and desks in Belsize Park

Yes. Belsize Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW3. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. The longest counter piece decides the swing radius outside. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The kitchen is generally a rear extension or a knocked-through pair of rooms, so part of the perimeter is old wall and part of it is new. What is wanted there is a counter reading as furniture rather than as a shop fitting, which puts the edge profile, the returns and the finish on the back of the counter under real scrutiny. The building stays open, so the counter goes in after hours. 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. A long counter magnifies every millimetre the carcass is out.

A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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. Protection stays down until the last piece is bedded. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Packaging leaves with us rather than filling the lobby.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Card reader positions come from the operator, not the architect. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. Two desks on one site still take two templates.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Nothing is drawn square that the carcass did not build square. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. The scribe is cut in the shop, eased on site, and no further. Confirm the edge profile and which faces receive it, and tell us whether a screen, hatch or gate forms part of the counter before the carcass is built. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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. A desk in a re-let space is specified for the next occupier too.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. 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. A knee recess is an opening, and an opening weakens a piece in transit.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. 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 counter shape follows the queue first and the slab second.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. 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. 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.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. 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. 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. Matching across sites means matching blocks, not matching names.