Reception counters and desks in Ladbroke Grove

Yes. Ladbroke Grove is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W10, W11. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. The tail lift needs pavement, not simply a space. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The chimney breast is usually still standing with the opening blocked up, and the alcoves either side of it are rarely the same width as each other. 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. Marketing suites get a permanent counter for a temporary lobby. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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. What the joiner left behind is what the templater records.

Every flight adds a set of handling movements, and handling is where stone gets damaged, so a fourth-floor walk-up is priced by the flight rather than by the metre. 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. Nothing is carried through a reception still taking visitors. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Outside opening hours is usually when the kerb is free.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. A counter in a working building is an evening job. 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. One visit, because a lobby cannot be closed twice.

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. Two planes, one drawing, one setting-out point. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A bowed lobby wall is a scribe, and a scribe takes hours. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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. Dilapidations decide more counter specifications than taste does.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. No money changes hands before the template. An under-stairs cupboard eats one end of most of these kitchens, and the run stops at a door that has to keep opening. Two working surfaces at two heights, a return between them and clear knee space under the lower one: that is the shape almost every counter ends up being, whatever the front elevation promised. Stone on a joinery carcass wants that carcass square first.

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. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. Whoever holds the lease usually holds the loading bay.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. 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. The low shelf is drawn to the counter above it, not to the wall.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. 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. Where the front is curved the top is cut on a waterjet, and the carcass has to be built to the same radius rather than close to it. Overhang at the public face is agreed before the carcass is built.