Reception counters and desks in Limehouse

Yes. Limehouse is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. 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. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

These buildings have firm rules about what can be propped open, left in a lobby or carried through the residents entrance. The commercial work in a neighbourhood of new blocks is concierge desks and ground-floor fit-outs: a managed lobby needing a counter that works as a post point and a security position at once, or a shell unit turned into a dental practice or a clinic. A pharmacy counter is two heights before anybody draws it. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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 bowed lobby wall is a scribe, and a scribe takes hours.

A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. 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. Working out of hours costs less than a chipped counter does. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. 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.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop replacement. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of 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. Fit-out programmes slip toward the counter, never away from 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. The joiner has to finish before we are able to start.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Two planes, one drawing, one setting-out point. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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. The counter is scribed to the carcass, and the carcass to the floor. Send the lift car internal dimensions and the loading bay rules with the carcass dimensions, and have the operator mark where the payment terminal and cable grommets really go. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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 landlord's shell and a tenant's desk are two separate briefs.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. The kitchen usually sits along the internal spine of the plan with the glazing at the far end, so the run itself has no window and no daylight on it. The lobby was finished by the developer, so the counter is scribed to stone, terrazzo or a boarded wall somebody else laid, and that face is measured rather than assumed square. Marketing suites get a permanent counter for a temporary lobby.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A counter standing proud of the wall has nothing to hide behind.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. These flats are built with a floating floor over a concrete slab for acoustic reasons, and it deflects slightly under the weight of a stone island. A neighbourhood of new blocks means concierge desks: a managed lobby with a counter working as a post point and a security position at the same time. Concierge desks work as a post room and a security point at once.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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.