Reception counters and desks in Mortlake

Yes. Mortlake is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW14. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. 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. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Half-landings mean the back of the house sits at a slightly different level from the front, and a knocked-through kitchen crosses that line. The commercial work around housing of this age is shopfront: a narrow unit off a high-street parade, entered up a step, with the reception running back from the door into the depth of the plan. The knee recess is argued over hardest where the floor is shallowest. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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. A counter set to the wall instead of to itself will show it.

Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. 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. Nothing is carried through a reception still taking visitors. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. One space, one visit, and the counter goes in whole.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. One counter, one drawing, and no second bite at it. A specification repeated across several plots has to be repeatable, which quietly rules out the natural stones where no two slabs match. 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. Several desks off one slab run, or they will not match.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. 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. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A packer belongs under the joinery, never under the counter. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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 desk in a re-let space is specified for the next occupier too.

Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Replacing one plot years after handover is the problem nobody plans for, because a quartz colour can be reordered and a granite block cannot. 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. The counter is the last trade in and the first thing judged.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Standing a three-metre length on end takes more headroom outside the car than inside it, and a low lobby ceiling is what actually stops it. 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. The way in is walked with the joiner as well as with a tape.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. What the joiner left behind is what the templater records.

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. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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. A join in the shelf and a join in the top belong in one place.