Reception counters and desks in Farnborough

Yes. Farnborough is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. 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. A red route puts a clock on a counter that will not be rushed. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The floor is often flags or brick laid straight on the ground, so it is solid, uneven and not going to be levelled by chasing into it. Large houses in these streets get converted into clinics, nurseries, small offices and members' rooms, and the reception ends up in a hall that was never meant to hold a desk. The building around the lobby decides the counter more than the brief does. 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. 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. The scribe is cut in the shop, eased on site, and no further.

Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. A join forced by a doorway still lands over a carcass support. 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. Where the bay is booked by the hour, pieces come off in fitting order.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. A counter in a working building is an evening job.

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. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Yield on a counter is lost in the returns, not in the length. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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. Stone will not straighten joinery, and it will not forgive it either. Confirm the edge profile and which faces receive it, and tell us whether a screen, hatch or gate forms part of the counter before the carcass is built. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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.

Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. A larder, a butler sink and a dresser run put more edges and more cut-outs into the job than the floor area suggests. 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. A counter is measured in the lobby it will stand in.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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 curved front is a waterjet job and a carcass problem both.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. These have been added to over two centuries, so the kitchen is made of two or three walls of different ages and different thicknesses. What is wanted there is a counter reading as furniture rather than as a shop fitting, which puts the edge profile, the returns and the finish on the back of the counter under real scrutiny. A shopfront door caps the counter length before the slab does.