Reception counters and desks in Fulwell

Yes. Fulwell is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW2, TW11. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Where the bay is booked by the hour, pieces come off in fitting order. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Rear windows are wide and low with a deep tiled cill, and that cill decides how tall the upstand behind the sink can be. 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. The building around the lobby decides the counter more than the brief does. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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 public face is the face that has to be right.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. Lobby floors are boarded before the first piece comes off the trolley. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. The transaction shelf can wait on the van; the counter cannot.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop templating. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. 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. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. A counter in a working building is an evening job. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. One visit, because a lobby cannot be closed twice.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. The longest piece is decided before the shape is finalised. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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 counter set to the wall instead of to itself will show it. 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 two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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 operator uses the counter; the owner pays for it.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A packer belongs under the joinery, never under the counter.

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. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Where the front curves, the shelf below it curves with it.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. These went up as handed pairs, so in one house of the two the kitchen sits against the party wall and in the other it takes the alley side, and only one of them has an outside wall to work with. 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. A porter's desk stands on its own carcass, fixed into nothing original.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. 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. The upper counter is the piece that has to make the turn.