Reception counters and desks in East Sheen

Yes. East Sheen is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW14. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The larder had a slate or terrazzo shelf on its cold wall, heavy enough that it usually got left in place when everything else went. 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. A parade unit is entered up a step nobody thought to measure. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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. Nothing on a counter is corrected with sealant.

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. The way in is walked with the joiner as well as with a tape. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop installation 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. A phased fit-out gets phased templating, one lobby at a time. 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. 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. What the operator needs at the shelf outranks the elevation.

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. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass 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 template is taken to the carcass as built. 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. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. 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.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. 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. 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. The knee recess is not a variable between sites.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. A side door into a lobby with a cloakroom off it is the standard arrangement, so there is a second way in that misses the hall altogether. Districts built out between the wars have parades of their own, and the practices in them run to a counter with a waiting room behind it and a filing run under the shelf. Where the hall is tall, the light finds every seam in the counter.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The incoming main and the stopcock come up through the floor at the old scullery wall, so whatever unit stands over them has to stay removable. A dental or veterinary practice in this stock is usually a converted house, so the reception sits in what was the front room and the carcass is built around a chimney breast. Housing office counters get cleaned harder than they get used.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. 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. 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. Piece length is capped in the drawing office, not on the landing.