Reception counters and desks in Chelsea Harbour

Yes. Chelsea Harbour is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW10. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Trolleys cross block paving badly, so boards go down first. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Concrete panel walls bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and the back edge is cut to follow it. These are the counters where the lower transaction shelf earns its keep, because the people served at it are the people the standard was written for, so the knee space and the clear approach to it are checked on site rather than taken off a drawing. Public counters are specified for wear at the front edge. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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 scribe is cut in the shop, eased on site, and no further.

A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. 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. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. One space, one visit, and the counter goes in whole.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. 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. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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. Two desks on one site still take two templates. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. 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. Matching across sites means matching blocks, not matching names.

Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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. Stone will not straighten joinery, and it will not forgive it either. Tell us the hours the building can be worked in and whether the lobby stays open, and send photographs of every corner so we can find the ducts before we draw. 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. Approval in writing before a slab is committed to a desk.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. Where the goods entrance is round the back, the carry is priced from there.

The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The front edge runs straight whatever the wall behind it does.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. A good number of these blocks are large panel system builds, where the wall is a precast unit with a grouted joint and nothing gets cut into it. 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 transaction shelf carries the detail the upper counter hides.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. 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.