Reception counters and desks in Earl's Court

Yes. Earl's Court is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. The van stays put while the carcass is being scribed to. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Where the kitchen has taken the bay, the end of the room is three facets of glass set at angles and there is no straight wall left to finish against. The commercial work around housing of this age is shopfront: a narrow unit off a high-street parade, entered up a step, with the reception running back from the door into the depth of the plan. A converted house wants a counter that reads as furniture. Stud centres are almost never where the brackets would like to be, so fixing positions get set from the framing and the stone is designed to suit. 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. Where the plaster bows, the counter is drawn away from it.

A fitted stair carpet is either lifted or covered, because grit trodden into it under work boots does more harm than the carry itself. 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. Lobby floors are boarded before the first piece comes off the trolley. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. A red route puts a clock on a counter that will not be rushed.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. What the operator needs at the shelf outranks the elevation. Four kitchens ordered together take one template visit and one delivery, and that is where the saving comes from rather than from a discount on the stone. 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 knee recess is not a variable between sites.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Shelf depth is set by the knee space underneath it. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A partition that gives when you lean on it will give under someone sitting at an overhang, and a bonded mitre nearby is where that movement shows first. 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. A shadow gap solves what a scribe cannot. Send photographs taken walking from the pavement through the door to where the counter will stand, along with the carcass dimensions once the joiner has fixed it. A landlord with several similar flats usually wants one specification repeated, so the material, the edge detail and the upstand height are recorded and reused rather than rechosen each time. Where a managing agent has to approve the work, the drawing goes out in a form they can sign without ever standing in the lobby. What is left behind at lease end is a specification question.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Cornice runs round the head of the wall, so the wall units stop under it and the splashback band is trapped between two things that are not going to move. A front room converted into a surgery or a salon gives a small lobby and a counter that still has to leave width for people to get past it. Old shopfronts were never sized for a three-metre top.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. 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 longest piece is decided before the shape is finalised.

The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The knee recess is checked for square before the shelf is cut.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. The chimney breast is usually still standing with the opening blocked up, and the alcoves either side of it are rarely the same width as each other. These parades have a step up off the pavement and a door that was never sized for a counter top, so the shopfront caps the piece length. The service road at the back is often the real way in.