Reception counters and desks in Harmondsworth

Yes. Harmondsworth is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB7. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. 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.

The floor is often flags or brick laid straight on the ground, so it is solid, uneven and not going to be levelled by chasing into it. What is wanted there is a counter reading as furniture rather than as a shop fitting, which puts the edge profile, the returns and the finish on the back of the counter under real scrutiny. Public counters are specified for wear at the front edge. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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 public face is the face that has to be right.

Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. 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. Pieces come in the order the carcass will accept them. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. Two heights, one unload, one trip across the pavement.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Several desks off one slab run, or they will not match. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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 counter is the last trade in and the first thing judged.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. 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.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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 counter set to the wall instead of to itself will show it. Confirm the edge profile and which faces receive it, and tell us whether a screen, hatch or gate forms part of the counter before the carcass is built. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. 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. Where the freeholder keeps the lobby, the finishes are protected first.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The kitchen is nearly always in a later rear or side extension, so half the room is a century older than the other half and the two meet mid-run. 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. Stone on a joinery carcass wants that carcass square first.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. 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. 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.

If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A packer belongs under the joinery, never under the counter.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. 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. A polished front edge travels facing inward, always.