Reception counters and desks in North Harrow

Yes. North Harrow is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA2. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. 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. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. One space, one visit, and the counter goes in whole. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The extension is commonly a flat-roofed addition of the seventies or eighties with a shallower floor build-up, so the two halves of the room do not sit at one level. Practices in this stock are usually converted houses on or behind an interwar parade: a dental surgery, a veterinary practice or a small office with its reception in what was the front room. Protected finishes decide the fixings before the drawing is finished. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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 counter is scribed to the carcass, and the carcass to the floor.

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. 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. Suction pads want a clean dry face, and lobby dust is not that. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Where the goods entrance is round the back, the carry is priced from there.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Card reader positions come from the operator, not the architect. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Two desks on one site still take two templates.

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. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. 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.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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 standing proud of the wall has nothing to hide behind. Confirm whether the reception is at ground level or up the stair, and send the carcass drawing with the chimney breast and any bay recorded on it. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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 short lease buys a different counter from a long one.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The original plan put a larder and a back door on the same wall, and both leave awkward stubs once the room is opened up. 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 desk is furniture, so all four edges get the same finish.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. The front edge is the one everybody touches, so it is drawn first.

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. 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. Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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. Setting out starts at the entrance end and works inward.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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 counter waits on the van until there is somewhere to stand it.