Reception counters and desks in Crystal Palace

Yes. Crystal Palace is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE19, SE20. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Where the goods entrance is round the back, the carry is priced from there. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The kitchen is generally a rear extension or a knocked-through pair of rooms, so part of the perimeter is old wall and part of it is new. Large houses in these streets get converted into clinics, nurseries, small offices and members' rooms, and the reception ends up in a hall that was never meant to hold a desk. Public counters are specified for wear at the front edge. 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 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. A lobby floor that falls is packed out under the joinery.

A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of 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. Lobby floors are boarded before the first piece comes off the trolley. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. An early slot buys an empty street and an empty lobby at once.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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.

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. Every change of plane is a join waiting to be placed well. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

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. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. Nothing on a counter is corrected with sealant. Confirm the edge profile and which faces receive it, and tell us whether a screen, hatch or gate forms part of the counter before the carcass is built. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. The template is taken to the carcass as built.

The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Open-tread and cantilevered stairs give nothing to lean a piece against, so the whole weight stays on the crew for the full length of the flight. 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. The upper counter is the piece that has to make the turn.

Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Solid walls hold their heat and their damp, and anything sealed against them is worth looking at again a season later. 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.

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. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. 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. Shelf depth is set by the knee space underneath it.