Reception counters and desks in Blackfriars

Yes. Blackfriars is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC4V, EC4Y. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. A frontage with no stopping is a fitting slot, not a fitting day. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Sprinkler heads and extract ducts are coordinated into the ceiling, so an extractor over an island goes where the services already allow. The lobby was finished by the developer, so the counter is scribed to stone, terrazzo or a boarded wall somebody else laid, and that face is measured rather than assumed square. Clinic counters carry a card reader and a screen at the low level. A partition that gives when you lean on it will give under someone sitting at an overhang, and a bonded mitre nearby is where that movement shows first. 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.

Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. 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 single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Crew size follows the distance from the van to the lobby.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop fabrication and worktop replacement. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Matching across sites means matching blocks, not matching names. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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. The counter is quoted with the programme written beside it.

Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. 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. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. 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. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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 building manager sets the hours the counter goes in.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The kitchen is usually part of the living space, so three edges are read from a sofa rather than from standing height at the sink. A reception counter answers to the building it stands in more than to the drawing, because it is fabricated to a carcass somebody else has already built and fixed. The counter is drawn to the carcass, and the carcass is measured first.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. Trolleys cross block paving badly, so boards go down first.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Riser panels, wall boxes and the boiler cupboard sit in fixed positions the developer will not move for a worktop. 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. Two heights and a return, settled before any stone is cut.

Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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. Where the lobby stays open, the work runs outside opening hours.