Reception counters and desks in Plashet

Yes. Plashet is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E6, E7. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Estate roads inside a controlled zone are sometimes managed privately rather than by the council, which changes who has to be asked. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Trolleys cross block paving badly, so boards go down first. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The combination boiler hangs on whichever wall happened to be external, and that decision has already used up a stretch of the only wall the run wanted. 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. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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 bowed lobby wall is a scribe, and a scribe takes hours.

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. 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 counter waits on the van until there is somewhere to stand it. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. One space, one visit, and the counter goes in whole.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement 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. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. A weekend fit is planned as a weekend fit from the outset. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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. A repeatable counter needs a repeatable material.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Setting out starts at the entrance end and works inward. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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 counter is scribed to the carcass, and the carcass to the floor. 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. 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. 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. The building manager sets the hours the counter goes in.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. 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 lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A counter standing proud of the wall has nothing to hide behind.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. The front door of the building sits at the top of a step off a tiled path, so the carry starts outside the building rather than at the door of the flat. A front room converted into a surgery or a salon gives a small lobby and a counter that still has to leave width for people to get past it. A shopfront door caps the counter length before the slab does.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. The original stair has an open well running the full height of the building, which occasionally lets a long piece go up vertically where it would never take the turns. These parades have a step up off the pavement and a door that was never sized for a counter top, so the shopfront caps the piece length. A porter's desk stands on its own carcass, fixed into nothing original.

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. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. The carcass is levelled before the top is ever offered up.