Reception counters and desks in Nunhead

Yes. Nunhead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE15. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. A booked bay costs less than an hour of a crew standing still. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The rear room has a bay or a wide window onto the garden, so the sink length is short and the real working length is on the return. 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. The service road at the back is often the real way in. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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 lobby floor that falls is packed out under the joinery.

Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. 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 transaction shelf goes almost anywhere the upper top will not. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. The tail lift needs pavement, not simply a space.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Fit-out programmes slip toward the counter, never away from it. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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 joiner has to finish before we are able to start.

Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. A counter reads as one plane or as several, and that is a drawing decision. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. Nothing on a counter is corrected with sealant. 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. Planned programmes run several kitchens in sequence, so template, fabrication and fitting move as a rolling operation and one uncollected key holds up more than one flat. 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. Where the freeholder keeps the lobby, the finishes are protected first.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. The template is taken to the carcass as built.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits 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. Where the counter turns, the pattern turns with it.

If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. 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. 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. Reception work is booked around the building staying open.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. 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. Support positions go on the drawing before the top is nested.