Reception counters and desks in Coldharbour

Yes. Coldharbour is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE9. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. 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. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. A booked bay costs less than an hour of a crew standing still. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The rear door has a concrete step and a small canopy over it, and that step is the whole of the difference between the kitchen floor and the garden path. 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. Steel and brick leave a desk nothing to lean against. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. 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. What is out of true gets measured, not talked around.

Spindles and a newel cap stand proud of the string, so the usable width on a turn is measured to the handrail rather than to the wall behind it. 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 join forced by a doorway still lands over a carcass support. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. The tail lift needs pavement, not simply a space.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop templating. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Matching across sites means matching blocks, not matching names. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. 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. The counter is quoted with the programme written beside it.

Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. The return between the two levels is drawn first and cut first. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A lobby floor that falls is packed out under the joinery. 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. Access is arranged through a managing agent or a scheme office rather than with the household directly, so a date gets confirmed once in writing and moving it costs a fortnight. 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. A managed lobby has rules the counter has to be carried under.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. Nothing on a counter is corrected with sealant.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. 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. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. 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. A counter join lines up with the plane above it or it gets moved.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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. Where the lobby stays open, the work runs outside opening hours.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The wall between the kitchen and the hall is load-bearing blockwork rather than a stud, so an opening through it is a lintel job and not an afternoon with a bolster. Estates of this kind carry the buildings that serve them: a housing office, a health centre, a community hall, and every one has a counter the public queues at. Nurseries want a hatch, and the hatch is on the same drawing.