Reception counters and desks in Fulham Reach

Yes. Fulham Reach is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Handover kitchens are fitted with the cheapest carcass the specification allowed, and cam-lock chipboard boxes are what a stone top has to sit on. The commercial work in a neighbourhood of new blocks is concierge desks and ground-floor fit-outs: a managed lobby needing a counter that works as a post point and a security position at once, or a shell unit turned into a dental practice or a clinic. Housing office counters get cleaned harder than they get used. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. 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.

Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn run. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. On a fit-out counter the date is half the decision. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. 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. Nothing is cut until the joinery has been signed off.

Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Where the front curves, the shelf below it curves with it. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The public face is the face that has to be right. Send the lift car internal dimensions and the loading bay rules with the carcass dimensions, and have the operator mark where the payment terminal and cable grommets really go. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. Where a managing agent has to approve the work, the drawing goes out in a form they can sign without ever standing in the lobby. The counter drawing is signed by whoever is paying for it.

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. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink 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 return between the two levels is drawn first and cut first.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Underfloor heating in the screed means nothing is fixed into the floor, so an island is anchored to the carcasses alone. The lobby was finished by the developer, so the counter is scribed to stone, terrazzo or a boarded wall somebody else laid, and that face is measured rather than assumed square. A converted house wants a counter that reads as furniture.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. A counter set to the wall instead of to itself will show it.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Ceiling heights are held to the minimum the plan allows, so the panel between worktop and wall units is a short piece. A neighbourhood of new blocks means concierge desks: a managed lobby with a counter working as a post point and a security position at the same time. Old shopfronts were never sized for a three-metre top.