Reception counters and desks in Gunnersbury

Yes. Gunnersbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W4, TW8. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. 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. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Steel windows sit in narrow reveals with a slim cill, which leaves almost no depth for an upstand to return into. A block of this age carries a porter's desk in the entrance hall, and that hall is usually a protected interior with panelling, an original floor and finishes nobody is allowed to fix into. Marketing suites get a permanent counter for a temporary lobby. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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 shadow gap solves what a scribe cannot.

Lift doors close on a timer that takes no account of somebody holding a worktop, so a pair of hands stays on the buttons at each end. 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. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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 installation 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. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. 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. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. 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. On a fit-out counter the date is half the decision.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. 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. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The knee recess is checked for square before the shelf is cut. Measure the lift car internally, photograph the stair turn and the hall, and confirm with the managing agent what may and may not be fixed into. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. A short lease buys a different counter from a long one.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Floors are solid concrete under a screed, so nothing is packed by driving a fixing in and everything is packed by shimming. 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. Two heights and a return, settled before any stone is cut.

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 sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. A reception fit is often booked outside opening hours precisely because that is when the kerb in front of the building is free. The tail lift needs pavement, not simply a space.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A car will often hold more than its doors will admit, and it is the clear width between the door edges that a piece actually has to pass through. 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. Trestles go up in the lobby before anything is unwrapped.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Inter-war purpose-built blocks have curved external walls and steel windows, so a run along an outside wall is following a genuine curve rather than a bow. That makes the counter a freestanding thing on its own carcass, drawn to clear the skirting rather than to sit against it, with the fixings agreed before the drawing is finished. A stair off the pavement caps what can be turned onto the landing.