Reception counters and desks in Euston

Yes. Euston is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW1. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. An early slot buys an empty street and an empty lobby at once. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The ceiling is an in-situ concrete soffit under a skim, so an extractor goes out through the wall rather than up through anything. Estates of this kind carry the buildings that serve them, and every one has a counter the public queues at: a housing office, a health centre, a community hall, a library. Public counters are specified for wear at the front edge. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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. Twist in a carcass shows first at the transaction shelf.

Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. 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 upper counter is the piece that has to make the turn. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Waiting time on a counter job is the most expensive hour of it.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Where the lobby stays open, the work runs outside opening hours. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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 spare offcut kept back can save a whole counter later.

The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Yield on a counter is lost in the returns, not in the length. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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 long counter magnifies every millimetre the carcass is out. Tell us the hours the building can be worked in and whether the lobby stays open, and send photographs of every corner so we can find the ducts before we draw. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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. The counter outlives the tenancy more often than not.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. A passive vent or a ducted extract shaft takes a corner of the kitchen from floor to ceiling and cannot be reduced. 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. Stone on a joinery carcass wants that carcass square first.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through 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. A curved front is a waterjet job and a carcass problem both.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. The counter comes off the van first and goes in last.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Suction lifters earn their keep on a straight flight and become a liability on a winder, where a handle standing out from the face is one more thing to catch on a wall. 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. Trestles go up in the lobby before anything is unwrapped.