Reception counters and desks in New Cross

Yes. New Cross 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. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. The longest counter piece decides the swing radius outside. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Cornice, picture rails and deep skirting survive in converted rooms, so the run stands off the wall and the back edge follows the units rather than the plaster. That entrance is what caps the counter, because a shopfront door and the step in front of it will take far less than a full-length top, so the run is broken over a support in the carcass rather than gambled on. Steel and brick leave a desk nothing to lean against. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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 carcass is levelled before the top is ever offered up.

The hall is the only way in and out for whoever lives there, so it is cleared and then kept clear for as long as pieces are moving. 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. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. Packaging leaves with us rather than filling the lobby.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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. Shared-house kitchens take heavier use from more people than a family kitchen does, and the surface gets chosen on that basis rather than on looks. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Several desks off one slab run, or they will not match. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely 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. The counter is the last trade in and the first thing judged.

The step or level change between the original room and the return is real, and the units need packing before stone goes across it. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Where the front curves, the shelf below it curves with it. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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 shelf over a knee recess cannot be packed, so it is cut true. 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. Where a letting agent sits between us and the owner the approval passes through two sets of hands, so a quote has to be clear enough to forward without a covering explanation. 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. Whoever signs it inherits the join positions with it.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. 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. Nurseries want a hatch, and the hatch is on the same drawing.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Kitchens in these flats are frequently in what was a bedroom or a return room, so the window is tall and its sill sits close to worktop height. A front room converted into a surgery or a salon gives a small lobby and a counter that still has to leave width for people to get past it. The building stays open, so the counter goes in after hours.

Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Where the turn inside is tight the piece gets turned on the path and brought in already on edge, which needs room in front of the door as well as behind 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. Where the lift will not take it, the join is designed rather than risked.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. 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. Apertures change from desk to desk, so each drawing is its own.