Reception counters and desks in Brent Cross

Yes. Brent Cross is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW4, NW2. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. A frontage with no stopping is a fitting slot, not a fitting day. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. Practices in this stock are usually converted houses on or behind an interwar parade: a dental surgery, a veterinary practice or a small office with its reception in what was the front room. A porter's desk stands on its own carcass, fixed into nothing original. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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. Twist in a carcass shows first at the transaction shelf.

Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. 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. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. Crew size follows the distance from the van to the lobby.

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 installation and worktop templating. 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. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. The counter is quoted with the programme written beside it. 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. 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. Where the lobby stays open, the work runs outside opening hours.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. The longest piece is decided before the shape is finalised. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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 long counter magnifies every millimetre the carcass is out. Confirm whether the reception is at ground level or up the stair, and send the carcass drawing with the chimney breast and any bay recorded on it. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. A reception fit is often booked outside opening hours precisely because that is when the kerb in front of the building is free. Trolleys cross block paving badly, so boards go down first.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind 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. Where the front curves, the shelf below it curves with it.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. These were built with a coal store and an outside lavatory off the back, and where those got absorbed into the kitchen the walls around them are thinner and later. 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.

Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The scribe is cut in the shop, eased on site, and no further.