Reception counters and desks in New Cross Gate

Yes. New Cross Gate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Nothing is stood anywhere on a pavement it could be knocked from. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Where the kitchen is on the entrance level, the piece comes off the deck and turns straight in without going up or down at all. Estates of this kind carry the buildings that serve them, and every one has a counter the public queues at: a housing office, a health centre, a community hall, a library. Goods lifts in old warehouses take longer pieces than most buildings. 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. 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. Two levels means two datums, and they are reconciled on paper.

Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on 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. The way in is walked with the joiner as well as with a tape. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. A height barrier rules out the tail lift before it rules out anything else.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop templating. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. The knee recess is not a variable between sites. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. 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 counter in a working building is an evening job.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. A join in the shelf and a join in the top belong in one place. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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 public face is the face that has to be right. 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. 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. 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 serving height comes from the standard, not from the landlord.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. 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 front edge is the one everybody touches, so it is drawn first.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. 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. Piece length is capped in the drawing office, not on the landing.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. A service duct runs between the kitchen and the bathroom stacked above it, and access to that duct stays open whatever the layout does. 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.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. Where the front is curved the top is cut on a waterjet, and the carcass has to be built to the same radius rather than close to it. Setting out starts at the entrance end and works inward.