Reception counters and desks in Marks Gate

Yes. Marks Gate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM6. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Crew size follows the distance from the van to the lobby. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A minority of these are non-traditional precast types, and in those the inside face of the outer wall is a panel between columns rather than a masonry wall. These are the counters where the lower transaction shelf earns its keep, because the people served at it are the people the standard was written for, so the knee space and the clear approach to it are checked on site rather than taken off a drawing. The knee recess is argued over hardest where the floor is shallowest. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. 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 knee recess is checked for square before the shelf is cut.

Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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. The counter is the last thing in and the first thing looked at. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. Trolleys cross block paving badly, so boards go down first.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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 new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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.

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. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. Two levels means two datums, and they are reconciled on paper. Tell us the hours the building can be worked in and whether the lobby stays open, and send photographs of every corner so we can find the ducts before we draw. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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 stays when the tenant goes, and is chosen accordingly.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. There is nearly always a boxed soil stack or a service riser in a corner of the run, and it is rarely mentioned at enquiry. 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. A lobby gets templated the way a kitchen never is.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The carry is the constraint: a single stair with tight half-landings, or deck access with a long walk from the lift. 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. Serving height comes off the standard, not off the sketch.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Overhang at the public face is agreed before the carcass is built.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. 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. Working out of hours costs less than a chipped counter does.