Reception counters and desks in Pratts Bottom

Yes. Pratts Bottom is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A range or an Aga in an original recess is usually immovable, so the run is designed around it and the clearances come from the appliance. 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. A parade unit is entered up a step nobody thought to measure. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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. Column casings take machined returns, not filler.

A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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. Pieces come in the order the carcass will accept them. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. 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 especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. The counter is quoted with the programme written beside it. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Where the lobby stays open, the work runs outside opening hours.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. 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. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. What is out of true gets measured, not talked around. 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. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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. A porter's desk is specified to outlast the porter.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. The counter comes off the van first and goes in last.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. 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. A counter reads as one plane or as several, and that is a drawing decision.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Nothing changes hands until after the template. A lantern or a rooflight over the room throws raking light across every horizontal surface, which shows a lipped join from the far side of the kitchen. 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. A lobby gets templated the way a kitchen never is.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. A polished front edge travels facing inward, always.