Reception counters and desks in Custom House

Yes. Custom House is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E16. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. 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. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Where the goods entrance is round the back, the carry is priced from there. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The back door frequently opens straight into the kitchen, which is the best carry route in the house and the one people forget to mention. Practices in this stock are usually converted houses on or behind an interwar parade: a dental surgery, a veterinary practice or a small office with its reception in what was the front room. The knee recess is argued over hardest where the floor is shallowest. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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 front edge runs straight whatever the wall behind it does.

Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. 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. Every re-grip near a finished front edge is planned out beforehand. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. An early slot buys an empty street and an empty lobby at once.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. 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. 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. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. 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 counter join lines up with the plane above it or it gets moved. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. Where the plaster bows, the counter is drawn away from it. Confirm whether the reception is at ground level or up the stair, and send the carcass drawing with the chimney breast and any bay recorded on it. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. 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. What is left behind at lease end is a specification question.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. 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. Yield on a counter is lost in the returns, not in the length.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. Where the front is curved the top is cut on a waterjet, and the carcass has to be built to the same radius rather than close to it. A curved front is a waterjet job and a carcass problem both.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. A side passage and a back door mean the stone rarely has to come through the house, which changes the job more than most people expect. 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. A lobby gets templated the way a kitchen never is.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. 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.