Reception counters and desks in Longthornton

Yes. Longthornton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW16. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Crew size follows the distance from the van to the lobby. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The under-stair cupboard opens off the kitchen in most of them, and its door swing is the reason a corner run stops where it does. 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. Old shopfronts were never sized for a three-metre top. 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 bowed lobby wall is a scribe, and a scribe takes hours.

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 long top on edge sweeps wider than the crew carrying it. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Trolleys cross block paving badly, so boards go down first.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. 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. 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 joiner has to finish before we are able to start. 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. Reception work is booked around the building staying open.

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. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. The low shelf is drawn to the counter above it, not to the wall. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. 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. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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. The counter drawing is signed by whoever is paying for it.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. A side passage and a back door mean the stone rarely has to come through the house, which changes the job more than most people expect. 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. Front of house is read from standing height and from seated height both.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. 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. 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.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. A lobby is one of the few places a piece can be staged, so the counter comes in early and stands on trestles until the carcass is ready for it. Where the lift will not take it, the join is designed rather than risked.

Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. 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. 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. Overhang at the public face is agreed before the carcass is built.