Reception counters and desks in Shepherd's Bush

Yes. Shepherd's Bush is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W12. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. A bay suspension is a line on the quote, not a surprise. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The front door of the building sits at the top of a step off a tiled path, so the carry starts outside the building rather than at the door of the flat. 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. 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. A lobby floor that falls is packed out under the joinery.

A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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. The counter is the last thing in and the first thing looked at. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Two heights, one unload, one trip across the pavement.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. 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. Several desks off one slab run, or they will not match. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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. The counter is the last trade in and the first thing judged.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. Nothing on a counter is corrected with sealant. 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. The person choosing the surface is not the person who will cook on it, which argues for a finish that absorbs ordinary wear rather than one that rewards careful housekeeping. 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. The knee recess is not negotiable, whoever is signing.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. 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. Working out of hours costs less than a chipped counter does.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. The template is taken to the carcass as built.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. 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 original stair has an open well running the full height of the building, which occasionally lets a long piece go up vertically where it would never take the turns. A front room converted into a surgery or a salon gives a small lobby and a counter that still has to leave width for people to get past it. Public counters are specified for wear at the front edge.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. The apertures for cable and card readers are what changes between one desk and the next, and every change is a fresh drawing rather than a variation. Apertures change from desk to desk, so each drawing is its own.