Reception counters and desks in Selhurst

Yes. Selhurst is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE25. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. A timed school street shuts the road either side of the school day, so the van goes in between those two windows or it does not go in. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Nothing is stood anywhere on a pavement it could be knocked from. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The flat entrance door is a certified fire door on a closer, and taking it off for an hour means dealing with the seals and the closer before the day ends. 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 porter's desk stands on its own carcass, fixed into nothing original. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. 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. A bowed lobby wall is a scribe, and a scribe takes hours.

The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. 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. A knee recess is an opening, and an opening weakens a piece in transit. An event-day suspension can override a bay that is perfectly usable the rest of the week, so a booked space gets checked again nearer the time. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. A height barrier rules out the tail lift before it rules out anything else.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating. 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. 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. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. A repeatable counter needs a repeatable material. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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. Fit-out programmes slip toward the counter, never away from it.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. A reception fit is often booked outside opening hours precisely because that is when the kerb in front of the building is free. Service yards want a name and a time, given a week out.

Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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. Every re-grip near a finished front edge is planned out beforehand.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. 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 doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Where the counter turns, the pattern turns with it.

Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Boxed sash frames swallow a hundred millimetres of wall on each side of the opening, so the wall between a window and a corner is shorter than a plan makes it look. That entrance is what caps the counter, because a shopfront door and the step in front of it will take far less than a full-length top, so the run is broken over a support in the carcass rather than gambled on. Public counters are specified for wear at the front edge.