Reception counters and desks in Headstone

Yes. Headstone is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA2, HA1. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. A height barrier rules out the tail lift before it rules out anything else. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The larder had a cold shelf and an air brick straight through to the outside, and that brick is usually still open behind whatever now stands in front of it. Practices in this stock are usually converted houses on or behind an interwar parade: a dental surgery, a veterinary practice or a small office with its reception in what was the front room. A porter's desk stands on its own carcass, fixed into nothing original. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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 packer belongs under the joinery, never under the counter.

Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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 polished front edge travels facing inward, always. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Service yards want a name and a time, given a week out.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop replacement. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Apertures change from desk to desk, so each drawing is its own.

The short run at the head of a U usually sits under a window, so that piece is scribed on three sides at once and has nowhere left to be pushed back to. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. A counter join lines up with the plane above it or it gets moved. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. What the joiner left behind is what the templater records. Confirm whether the reception is at ground level or up the stair, and send the carcass drawing with the chimney breast and any bay recorded on it. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. Where a managing agent has to approve the work, the drawing goes out in a form they can sign without ever standing in the lobby. A desk approved in principle is not a desk approved to cut.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. A bowed lobby wall is a scribe, and a scribe takes hours.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A U puts the sink in one leg, the hob in another and any drainer grooves in whatever is left, which spreads the cut-outs about but does not reduce the machining time. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Yield on a counter is lost in the returns, not in the length.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The apertures for cable and card readers are what changes between one desk and the next, and every change is a fresh drawing rather than a variation. A weekend fit is planned as a weekend fit from the outset.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Where the dividing wall has come out there is a steel over the opening and a nib of the old wall left at each end, and a run turning that corner has to clear both nibs. The carcass is built around a chimney breast or into a bay, so the counter is drawn to a shape the joiner had to invent rather than to a rectangle, and the return between the upper counter and the transaction shelf rarely nests neatly against the long piece. Public counters are specified for wear at the front edge.