Reception counters and desks in Golden Lane

Yes. Golden Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC1Y. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. The longest counter piece decides the swing radius outside. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The external wall is a concrete panel with a modest window, so the run under it sits in a shallow reveal with a hard cill. 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. Steel and brick leave a desk nothing to lean against. 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. Stone will not straighten joinery, and it will not forgive it either.

Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. 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. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Packaging leaves with us rather than filling the lobby.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating 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. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. 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. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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 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. A curved front is a waterjet job and a carcass problem both. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

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. The front edge runs straight whatever the wall behind it does. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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. Access and out-of-hours permission sit with the building, not the tenant.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Windows sit in deep concrete reveals with a cast sill, and that reveal is usually the least square thing in the room. 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. The height that matters most is the low one.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. A reception fit is often booked outside opening hours precisely because that is when the kerb in front of the building is free. A bay suspension is a line on the quote, not a surprise.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. 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. 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. Where the plaster bows, the counter is drawn away from it.

Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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. Nothing is cut until the joinery has been signed off.