Reception counters and desks in Charlton

Yes. Charlton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE7. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Where a side return has been infilled, the join between old brick and new blockwork lands mid-run and the two faces are never in one plane. The commercial work around housing of this age is shopfront: a narrow deep unit off a parade, with the reception running back from the door into the depth of the plan. The knee recess is argued over hardest where the floor is shallowest. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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 template is taken to the carcass as built.

Every internal doorway on the way through is another frame to clear, and internal doors come off their hinges rather than being propped open. 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. A counter piece walked in on edge needs the headroom checked too. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. A booked bay costs less than an hour of a crew standing still.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Repeat receptions are worth settling once and then leaving alone. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. On a fit-out counter the date is half the decision.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. The counter shape follows the queue first and the slab second. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. Twist in a carcass shows first at the transaction shelf. Send photographs taken walking from the pavement through the door to where the counter will stand, along with the carcass dimensions once the joiner has fixed it. Residents are given written notice before anyone attends, and that notice period rather than the workshop is what governs the earliest sensible start. 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.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. 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. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A long counter magnifies every millimetre the carcass is out.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A pendant light hanging in the middle of a hall ceiling sets the angle a piece can be tilted to, and it is the measurement nobody thinks to take. 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. Nothing is carried through a reception still taking visitors.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. A hall that widens further in is still only as good as its tightest point, and that point is usually within a metre of the front door. 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 way in is walked with the joiner as well as with a tape.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. A back-of-counter return is a separate piece with its own edges.