Reception counters and desks in Cannon Hill

Yes. Cannon Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW20. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. 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. The counter comes off the van first and goes in last. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. The parades behind terraces of this period carry pharmacies, minicab offices, takeaways and small surgeries, and their counters are the hardest-used stone we fit. The lobby was finished by somebody else, and the counter joins it. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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. Where the plaster bows, the counter is drawn away from it.

There is no leaning a piece against a wall halfway up, so any flight longer than a dozen treads is planned around a rest point on a landing. 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. Every re-grip near a finished front edge is planned out beforehand. 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. A booked bay costs less than an hour of a crew standing still.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. 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. A spare offcut kept back can save a whole counter later. 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. Repeat receptions are worth settling once and then leaving alone.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. 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 material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. 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 shadow gap solves what a scribe cannot. Tell us whether there is rear access off a service road, and send the carcass dimensions with the till, terminal and cable positions marked on them. 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. Sign-off happens before nesting, never after it.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. 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. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. The kitchen is at the front or the back depending on the plan, and which it is decides whether there is a rear door on the route at all. A pharmacy counter is two heights before anyone draws it, with a consultation position at the low level and a dispensing side that never meets the public, and the apertures for a card reader and a till sit at the transaction shelf. A parade unit is entered up a step nobody thought to measure.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying 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. The counter is sized to the way in before it is sized to the slab.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The knee recess is checked for square before the shelf is cut.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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. The return between the two levels is drawn first and cut first.