Reception counters and desks in Moorgate

Yes. Moorgate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2M, EC2Y. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Whoever holds the lease usually holds the loading bay. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The window line is a continuous ribbon with structural mullions, so a run under it stops at a mullion rather than at a wall. 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. A converted house wants a counter that reads as furniture. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. 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.

Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. 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 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. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. The longest counter piece decides the swing radius outside.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop fabrication and worktop replacement. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Reception work is booked around the building staying open. 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. 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. A desk somebody sits at all day is specified for wear.

Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. The knee recess removes the leg the span was relying on. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. 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 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. Where a managing agent has to approve the work, the drawing goes out in a form they can sign without ever standing in the lobby. A desk in a re-let space is specified for the next occupier too.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. The counter is scribed to the carcass, and the carcass to the floor.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink does. 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.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The lift car, the loading bay and the building manager decide the piece sizes here, not the slab. 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. The desk is furniture, so all four edges get the same finish.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. 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. On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. 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.