Reception counters and desks in Richmond

Yes. Richmond is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW9, TW10. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of the borough. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. 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. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Cornice runs round the head of the wall, so the wall units stop under it and the splashback band is trapped between two things that are not going to move. The commercial work around housing of this age is shopfront: a narrow unit off a high-street parade, entered up a step, 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. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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.

The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. 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 goods lift diagonal belongs on the counter drawing. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. 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.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and 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. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Fit-out programmes slip toward the counter, never away from it. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. 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. The joiner has to finish before we are able to start.

The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A lobby floor that falls is packed out under the joinery. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. 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 managed lobby has rules the counter has to be carried under.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. No money changes hands before the template. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The rear wall of the addition carries both the back door and the window, which leaves very little unbroken wall for a run to sit against. 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 piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. 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. Pieces come in the order the carcass will accept them.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. 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.

How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. 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. Reception work is booked around the building staying open.