Reception counters and desks in Greenwich Peninsula

Yes. Greenwich Peninsula is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE10. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. The counter comes off the van first and goes in last. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Steel columns and downstands land where the frame put them, which is frequently in the middle of what would otherwise be a clean run. That means every edge is finished and the back of the counter is as visible as the front, so all four sides take the same profile and the same polish rather than only the public face. The knee recess is argued over hardest where the floor is shallowest. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. 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. A counter standing proud of the wall has nothing to hide behind.

A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. 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. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. A booked bay costs less than an hour of a crew standing still.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. What the operator needs at the shelf outranks the elevation. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. 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. The knee recess is not a variable between sites.

A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. External corners on a counter are mitred, never butted. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The carcass is levelled before the top is ever offered up. Send the goods lift dimensions and the carry route from the loading area, and confirm whether the counter stands clear of the walls or returns into one. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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. Approval in writing before a slab is committed to a desk.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Exposed brick and steel is the whole job here, because neither of them presents a flat plane to scribe to. 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. Nothing about the knee space is left for the fitters to improvise.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Open plan means long uninterrupted runs and an island in the middle of the room with every edge on show. Two working surfaces at two heights, a return between them and clear knee space under the lower one: that is the shape almost every counter ends up being, whatever the front elevation promised. The drawing follows the carcass; the carcass does not follow the drawing.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. The tail lift needs pavement, not simply a space.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. The knee recess removes the leg the span was relying on.