Reception counters and desks in Eden Park

Yes. Eden Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR3. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Houses of this period came with generous garages and utility rooms, so a second short run of stone is often part of the same job. 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. Where the hall is tall, the light finds every seam in the counter. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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. Two levels means two datums, and they are reconciled on paper.

Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. 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. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. A red route puts a clock on a counter that will not be rushed.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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.

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. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. The return between the two levels is drawn first and cut first. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. 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 public face is the face that has to be right. 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. What is left behind at lease end is a specification question.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. 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. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. 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.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. 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.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A counter set to the wall instead of to itself will show it.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Solid brick with a render coat is firm to work against and out of plumb, so the scribe at worktop height is different from the one at plinth 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. Housing office counters get cleaned harder than they get used.