Reception counters and desks in Hampton Wick

Yes. Hampton Wick is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT1. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. A bay suspension is a line on the quote, not a surprise. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. The commercial work around housing of this age is shopfront: a narrow deep unit off a parade, with the reception running back from the door into the depth of the plan. Protected finishes decide the fixings before the drawing is finished. 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. 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.

A carpeted hall runs a trolley badly, so a heavy piece is carried rather than rolled from the threshold in. 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. A goods lift diagonal belongs on the counter drawing. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Two heights, one unload, one trip across the pavement.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. One counter, one drawing, and no second bite at it. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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. Several desks off one slab run, or they will not match.

A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. 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. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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. 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. Send photographs taken walking from the pavement through the door to where the counter will stand, along with the carcass dimensions once the joiner has fixed it. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. 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. A counter is measured in the lobby it will stand in.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. A reception fit is often booked outside opening hours precisely because that is when the kerb in front of the building is free. The van stays put while the carcass is being scribed to.

Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. Two levels means two datums, and they are reconciled on paper.