Reception counters and desks in Cheapside

Yes. Cheapside is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2V. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. 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. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Trolleys cross block paving badly, so boards go down first. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Winders at the head of each flight are the tightest part of the climb and they are appreciably tighter than the straight run below them. That entrance is what caps the counter, because a shopfront door and the step in front of it will take far less than a full-length top, so the run is broken over a support in the carcass rather than gambled on. Where the hall is tall, the light finds every seam in the counter. Where the structure cannot be cut into, the stone is relieved instead, and a relief that deep changes both the yield off the slab and how the piece is handled. 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 public face is the face that has to be right.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. 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. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. One space, one visit, and the counter goes in whole.

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. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Nothing is cut until the joinery has been signed off. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. 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. A phased fit-out gets phased templating, one lobby at a time.

A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. A back-of-counter return is a separate piece with its own edges. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A counter set to the wall instead of to itself will show it. 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. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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. Approval in writing before a slab is committed to a desk.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. A packer belongs under the joinery, never under the counter.

Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Ceilings in the principal rooms are three metres or more, so a full-height panel behind a hob is a taller piece here than the same kitchen would need anywhere else. 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. Housing office counters get cleaned harder than they get used.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. 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. 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. Every change of plane is a join waiting to be placed well.

Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. A villa cut into flats leaves kitchens in rooms that were never kitchens, with services run to wherever they could physically be made to reach. A front room converted into a surgery or a salon gives a small lobby and a counter that still has to leave width for people to get past it. A converted house wants a counter that reads as furniture.