Reception counters and desks in Hampton Hill

Yes. Hampton Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW12. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Nothing is stood anywhere on a pavement it could be knocked from. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The front rooms sit over the shop window with a structural beam beneath them, and the floor either side of that beam is not at one level. 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. Protected finishes decide the fixings before the drawing is finished. 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. 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. Where the plaster bows, the counter is drawn away from it.

Carrying down a flight is not the easier direction, because the weight runs ahead of the crew and whoever is at the bottom has no way of stopping a slip. 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 transaction shelf goes almost anywhere the upper top will not. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. A height barrier rules out the tail lift before it rules out anything else.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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. A phased fit-out gets phased templating, one lobby at a time. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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. What the operator needs at the shelf outranks the elevation.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. A curved front is a waterjet job and a carcass problem both. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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 shadow gap solves what a scribe cannot. 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. 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. The knee recess is not negotiable, whoever is signing.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. 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 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.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Rear access over a flat roof or up an external stair exists in some of these, and it is worth checking before the front stair is assumed. 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. A desk seen from a whole floor is finished on every edge.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. 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. External corners on a counter are mitred, never butted.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. A flat over a shop is reached by a separate street door and a straight steep stair, and that stair is the whole access question. Terraces from this period sit behind small parades, and the counters there belong to pharmacies, minicab offices and takeaways rather than to lobbies. Clinic counters carry a card reader and a screen at the low level.