Reception counters and desks in Dollis Hill

Yes. Dollis Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW2, NW10. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Two heights, one unload, one trip across the pavement. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The outside walls are cavity and the party wall is solid brick, so fixings behave differently on the two long walls of the same room. 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 building stays open, so the counter goes in after hours. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. The scribe is cut in the shop, eased on site, and no further.

A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. 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. Nothing is carried through a reception still taking visitors. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. The van stays put while the carcass is being scribed to.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. 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. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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.

Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Where the front curves, the shelf below it curves with it. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. Stone will not straighten joinery, and it will not forgive it either. 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. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. The return between the two levels is drawn first and cut first.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. The extension is commonly a flat-roofed addition of the seventies or eighties with a shallower floor build-up, so the two halves of the room do not sit at one level. The carcass is built around a chimney breast or into a bay, so the counter is drawn to a shape the joiner had to invent rather than to a rectangle, and the return between the upper counter and the transaction shelf rarely nests neatly against the long piece. The building around the lobby decides the counter more than the brief does.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. The front edge runs straight whatever the wall behind it does.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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 way in is walked with the joiner as well as with a tape.