Reception counters and desks in Sloane Square

Yes. Sloane Square is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW1W, SW3. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Rear rooms of this date have a wide sash or a pair of garden doors, so a good deal of the wall the run wants is glass. 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. Clinic counters carry a card reader and a screen at the low level. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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 counter standing proud of the wall has nothing to hide behind.

Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. 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. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. The van stays put while the carcass is being scribed to.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating. 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. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Several desks off one slab run, or they will not match. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. 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 counter is the last trade in and the first thing judged.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Where the counter turns, the pattern turns with it. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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 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. Inventories record the condition of a kitchen at both ends of a tenancy, which is a practical argument for a surface that looks the same in its fifth year as its first. 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. A porter's desk is specified to outlast the porter.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Nothing in a house of this age is square, and the kitchen is usually the part that has been altered most often. Two working surfaces at two heights, a return between them and clear knee space under the lower one: that is the shape almost every counter ends up being, whatever the front elevation promised. Serving height comes off the standard, not off the sketch.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. The kitchen normally sits in the back addition or a later side return, which puts the run against the oldest and least straight wall in the building. What decides the piece sizes is the lobby and the way into it, since a counter top runs longer than a kitchen worktop and has no cabinet run to break it up. What the desk has to do decides what it is allowed to look like.

Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. 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.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Support positions go on the drawing before the top is nested.