Reception counters and desks in Scrattons Farm

Yes. Scrattons Farm is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. 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. The counter comes off the van first and goes in last. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The window sits in the middle of the run over the sink, and its board and cill set the limit on how tall an upstand can be. The parades behind terraces of this period carry pharmacies, minicab offices, takeaways and small surgeries, and their counters are the hardest-used stone we fit. A shopfront door caps the counter length before the slab does. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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 loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. 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 polished front edge travels facing inward, always. 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. A booked bay costs less than an hour of a crew standing still.

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 installation and worktop templating. 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. 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. Repeat receptions are worth settling once and then leaving alone. 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. On a fit-out counter the date is half the decision.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. 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. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. Tell us whether there is rear access off a service road, and send the carcass dimensions with the till, terminal and cable positions marked on them. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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. Whoever holds the keys holds the fitting slot.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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 is the last thing in and the first thing looked at.

Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. A pharmacy counter is two heights before anyone draws it, with a consultation position at the low level and a dispensing side that never meets the public, and the apertures for a card reader and a till sit at the transaction shelf. A porter's desk stands on its own carcass, fixed into nothing original.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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.

It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. The kitchen is at the front or the back depending on the plan, and which it is decides whether there is a rear door on the route at all. Terraces from this period sit behind small parades, and the counters there belong to pharmacies, minicab offices and takeaways rather than to lobbies. Public counters are specified for wear at the front edge.