Reception counters and desks in Mawneys

Yes. Mawneys is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM7. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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 template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Deep original skirting is often left in behind the units, standing them off the wall, so the back edge of the stone is plotted where the carcasses actually sit. The commercial work around housing of this age is shopfront: a narrow deep unit off a parade, with the reception running back from the door into the depth of the plan. A porter's desk stands on its own carcass, fixed into nothing original. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. 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. The knee recess is checked for square before the shelf is cut.

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 long top on edge sweeps wider than the crew carrying it. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. 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 especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. 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. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. 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. 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. Reception work is booked around the building staying open.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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 boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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. Two levels means two datums, and they are reconciled on paper. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. Reception fit-outs answer to a lease as much as to a drawing.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. 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. Where the lift will not take it, the join is designed rather than risked.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The public face is the face that has to be right.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. 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. The height that matters most is the low one.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The back addition is frequently a single skin of brick rendered on both faces, which takes a fixing badly and moves with the weather. What decides the piece sizes is the lobby and the way into it, since a counter top runs longer than a kitchen worktop and has no cabinet run to break it up. The counter is drawn to the carcass, and the carcass is measured first.