Reception counters and desks in Plumstead

Yes. Plumstead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE18. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. 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. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. One space, one visit, and the counter goes in whole. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

A conversion takes kitchen waste to a stack added to the outside of the building, which fixes the sink position long before anyone draws a layout. 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. A shopfront door caps the counter length before the slab does. 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. 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. A bowed lobby wall is a scribe, and a scribe takes hours.

Whether the kitchen sits straight ahead or off a turn at the end of the hall changes the maximum piece far more than the hall width does. 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. The counter waits on the van until there is somewhere to stand it. Visitor permits are issued to the household rather than to the trade, so the ones the day needs come from the customer and are best in hand the week before. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Where the goods entrance is round the back, the carry is priced from there.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop fabrication. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. 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. 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. 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 repeatable counter needs a repeatable material.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. 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. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Floors are the original joists with a later acoustic layer laid over them, and that layer is not flat where it meets the doorways. 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 porter's desk stands on its own carcass, fixed into nothing original.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. A lobby is one of the few places a piece can be staged, so the counter comes in early and stands on trestles until the carcass is ready for it. Two heights means two carries, and the low one is not the difficult one.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. A counter standing proud of the wall has nothing to hide behind.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. A counter reads as one plane or as several, and that is a drawing decision.