Reception counters and desks in Peckham Rye

Yes. Peckham Rye is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE15, SE22. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Packaging leaves with us rather than filling the lobby. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. Large houses in these streets get converted into clinics, nurseries, small offices and members' rooms, and the reception ends up in a hall that was never meant to hold a desk. Nurseries want a hatch, and the hatch is on the same drawing. 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 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. Nothing on a counter is corrected with sealant.

Two people will walk a two-metre piece in through a front door; the same hall with a three-metre piece wants four, purely because nobody can let go halfway. 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. Revolving doors get measured rather than assumed. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. A bay suspension is a line on the quote, not a surprise.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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.

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. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Where the counter turns, the pattern turns with it. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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. 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 template is taken to the carcass as built. Confirm the edge profile and which faces receive it, and tell us whether a screen, hatch or gate forms part of the counter before the carcass is built. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. 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. Reception fit-outs answer to a lease as much as to a drawing.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. 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. A counter piece walked in on edge needs the headroom checked too.

Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Support positions go on the drawing before the top is nested.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. A larder, a butler sink and a dresser run put more edges and more cut-outs into the job than the floor area suggests. 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 return between the two levels is the piece everything works off.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. Twist in a carcass shows first at the transaction shelf.