Reception counters and desks in Figges Marsh

Yes. Figges Marsh is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR4. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. 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. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Waiting time on a counter job is the most expensive hour of it. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Working hours are constrained by the business underneath, so noisy work has a window rather than a day. The parades behind terraces of this period carry pharmacies, minicab offices, takeaways and small surgeries, and their counters are the hardest-used stone we fit. A shopfront door caps the counter length before the slab does. 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. 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.

Where the stairwell is narrow enough that the stone travels on edge the polished face runs within an inch of the plaster, so the walls get boarded as well as the steps. 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. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. The counter comes off the van first and goes in last.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop fabrication. 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. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Repeat receptions are worth settling once and then leaving alone. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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. On a fit-out counter the date is half the decision.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. A curved front is a waterjet job and a carcass problem both. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. Tell us whether there is rear access off a service road, and send the carcass dimensions with the till, terminal and cable positions marked on them. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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.

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. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The front edge runs straight whatever the wall behind it does.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. External corners on a counter are mitred, never butted.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. 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. A window sill or a radiator on the half-landing takes the corner out of the turn at precisely the point the piece needs that corner. 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.

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. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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. The knee recess removes the leg the span was relying on.