Reception counters and desks in Hither Green

Yes. Hither Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE13, SE12. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Nothing is stood anywhere on a pavement it could be knocked from. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Wider halls make the carry noticeably easier, and that alone can remove a join that a narrower terrace would have forced into the run. The commercial work around housing of this age is shopfront: a narrow unit off a high-street parade, entered up a step, with the reception running back from the door into the depth of the plan. A shopfront door caps the counter length before the slab does. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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 suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. A height barrier rules out the tail lift before it rules out anything else.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop fabrication. 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. 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. Apertures change from desk to desk, so each drawing is its own. 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. A weekend fit is planned as a weekend fit from the outset.

Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. 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. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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 porter's desk is specified to outlast the porter.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. 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. Where the permit is a digital session rather than a paper one, somebody in the house has to start it at the hour the van actually arrives. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. Service yards want a name and a time, given a week out.

Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. The knee recess makes any twist in the carcass visible, since a shelf with nothing beneath it has nowhere for a packer to go. The public face is the face that has to be right.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. 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.