Reception counters and desks in Green Street

Yes. Green Street is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E7, E13. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. 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.

The stair from the street is narrow with a tight turn at the top, which caps piece length well below anything the run itself needs. 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. The knee recess is argued over hardest where the floor is shallowest. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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 front edge runs straight whatever the wall behind it does.

A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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 transaction shelf goes almost anywhere the upper top will not. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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 splashbacks & upstands. 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. Where several adults share the cooking the kitchen is in use most of the day, so a fitting slot has to be agreed with more people than usual. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. The counter is quoted with the programme written beside it. Households sharing a house tend to want two prep areas rather than one, which usually means an island as well as a perimeter run. 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. Where the lobby stays open, the work runs outside opening hours.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. 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. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. 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. Access and out-of-hours permission sit with the building, not the tenant.

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. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. A shadow gap solves what a scribe cannot.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. 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.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. The structure below is commercial, so the floor is often timber over a shop ceiling and the load path under an island is worth thinking about. A pharmacy counter is two heights before anyone draws it, with a consultation position at the low level and a dispensing side that never meets the public, and the apertures for a card reader and a till sit at the transaction shelf. Protected finishes decide the fixings before the drawing is finished.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. A lobby is one of the few places a piece can be staged, so the counter comes in early and stands on trestles until the carcass is ready for it. Revolving doors get measured rather than assumed.