Reception counters and desks in North Sheen

Yes. North Sheen is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW9. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. A frontage with no stopping is a fitting slot, not a fitting day. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The back door frequently opens straight into the kitchen, which is the best carry route in the house and the one people forget to mention. 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. A pharmacy counter is two heights before anybody draws it. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. A counter standing proud of the wall has nothing to hide behind.

A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. 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. Where the household has used up the visitor permits it gets for the year, the remaining options are a suspension or a paid bay and both belong on the quote. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Crew size follows the distance from the van to the lobby.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation 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. 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. 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 work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Two desks on one site still take two templates.

A join in a long run wants to sit away from the rooflight, because a seam under direct downlight shows in a way the same seam under a wall cupboard never does. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. The return between the two levels is drawn first and cut first. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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 carcass is levelled before the top is ever offered up. 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. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. 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.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Original quarry-tiled floors sit lower than a later screed, so a run crossing that junction needs the units packed to one level. The carcass is built around a chimney breast or into a bay, so the counter is drawn to a shape the joiner had to invent rather than to a rectangle, and the return between the upper counter and the transaction shelf rarely nests neatly against the long piece. Marketing suites get a permanent counter for a temporary lobby.

A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. The wall between the original room and the return usually carries a steel, and the plaster line above it steps, so anything full height behind the run is measured separately from the top. 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 counter join lines up with the plane above it or it gets moved.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. The rear extension is usually the newest and truest part of the building, so it is the older half of the kitchen that gives the trouble. 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.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. A lobby is one of the few places a piece can be staged, so the counter comes in early and stands on trestles until the carcass is ready for it. Suction pads want a clean dry face, and lobby dust is not that.