Reception counters and desks in Old Kent Road

Yes. Old Kent Road is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1, SE15. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. An early slot buys an empty street and an empty lobby at once. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Underfloor heating in the screed means nothing is fixed into the floor, so an island is anchored to the carcasses alone. The commercial work in a neighbourhood of new blocks is concierge desks and ground-floor fit-outs: a managed lobby needing a counter that works as a post point and a security position at once, or a shell unit turned into a dental practice or a clinic. Concierge desks work as a post room and a security point at once. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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.

Concierge buildings want the goods entrance, a booked lift and proof of insurance, all of which is straightforward when it is asked for a week out. 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. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Waiting time on a counter job is the most expensive hour of it.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. The joiner has to finish before we are able to start. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. 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. Reception work is booked around the building staying open.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. A counter join lines up with the plane above it or it gets moved. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. Nothing on a counter is corrected with sealant. Send the lift car internal dimensions and the loading bay rules with the carcass dimensions, and have the operator mark where the payment terminal and cable grommets really go. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Where a managing agent has to approve the work, the drawing goes out in a form they can sign without ever standing in the lobby. The knee recess is not negotiable, whoever is signing.

A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. 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. 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. Yield on a counter is lost in the returns, not in the length.

The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The template is taken to the carcass as built.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. 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. 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. A curved front is a waterjet job and a carcass problem both.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Ceiling heights are held to the minimum the plan allows, so the panel between worktop and wall units is a short piece. A neighbourhood of new blocks means concierge desks: a managed lobby with a counter working as a post point and a security position at the same time. A stair off the pavement caps what can be turned onto the landing.