Reception counters and desks in Royal Arsenal Riverside

Yes. Royal Arsenal Riverside 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. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Crew size follows the distance from the van to the lobby. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Underfloor heating in the screed means nothing is fixed into the floor, so an island is anchored to the carcasses alone. The commercial work in a neighbourhood of new blocks is concierge desks and ground-floor fit-outs: a managed lobby needing a counter that works as a post point and a security position at once, or a shell unit turned into a dental practice or a clinic. The building stays open, so the counter goes in after hours. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. 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 counter standing proud of the wall has nothing to hide behind.

Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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. Two heights means two carries, and the low one is not the difficult one. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Trolleys cross block paving badly, so boards go down first.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Replacing one plot years after handover is the problem nobody plans for, because a quartz colour can be reordered and a granite block cannot. 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. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn 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.

A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. A counter reads as one plane or as several, and that is a drawing decision. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The carcass is levelled before the top is ever offered up. Send the lift car internal dimensions and the loading bay rules with the carcass dimensions, and have the operator mark where the payment terminal and cable grommets really go. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. Where a managing agent has to approve the work, the drawing goes out in a form they can sign without ever standing in the lobby. What is left behind at lease end is a specification question.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. 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. Where the counter turns, the pattern turns with it.

The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Ceiling heights are held to the minimum the plan allows, so the panel between worktop and wall units is a short piece. The lobby was finished by the developer, so the counter is scribed to stone, terrazzo or a boarded wall somebody else laid, and that face is measured rather than assumed square. The building around the lobby decides the counter more than the brief does.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Plasterboard partitions mean light scribes and clean joins, and the fabrication effort moves to the visible faces instead. 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. Where the join lands is a sightline question before it is a slab question.

Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Stud centres are almost never where the brackets would like to be, so fixing positions get set from the framing and the stone is designed to suit. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. A shelf over a knee recess cannot be packed, so it is cut true.