Reception counters and desks in Peckham

Yes. Peckham 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. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. That entrance is what caps the counter, because a shopfront door and the step in front of it will take far less than a full-length top, so the run is broken over a support in the carcass rather than gambled on. The building stays open, so the counter goes in after hours. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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.

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. A counter piece walked in on edge needs the headroom checked too. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. 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 particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. 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 licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. The knee recess is not a variable between sites. Four kitchens ordered together take one template visit and one delivery, and that is where the saving comes from rather than from a discount on the stone. 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. A counter in a working building is an evening job.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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 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. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. 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. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. Twist in a carcass shows first at the transaction shelf.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Kitchens in these flats are frequently in what was a bedroom or a return room, so the window is tall and its sill sits close to worktop height. 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 building around the lobby decides the counter more than the brief does.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Yield on a counter is lost in the returns, not in the length.