Reception counters and desks in Smithfield

Yes. Smithfield is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC1A, EC1M. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. One space, one visit, and the counter goes in whole. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Steel columns and downstands land where the frame put them, which is frequently in the middle of what would otherwise be a clean run. Converted warehouses hold the studio, agency and workspace receptions, and a counter in one sits in open floor with nothing behind it. The service road at the back is often the real way in. Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. 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. The scribe is cut in the shop, eased on site, and no further.

Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. 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. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. Where the goods entrance is round the back, the carry is priced from there.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop templating. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Nothing is cut until the joinery has been signed off.

Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. The front edge is the one everybody touches, so it is drawn first. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Exposed structure means the back edge is not a straight line at all, and a scribe of fifteen or twenty millimetres across a run is normal. 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. Stone will not straighten joinery, and it will not forgive it either. Send the goods lift dimensions and the carry route from the loading area, and confirm whether the counter stands clear of the walls or returns into one. Nobody reseals a worktop annually in a let property, so a material that depends on being resealed is the wrong specification however well it photographs. 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 agent approves the drawing without leaving the office.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The front edge runs straight whatever the wall behind it does.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. 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. Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. 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. The counter is the last thing in and the first thing looked at.

Nothing is payable in advance of the template. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Open plan means long uninterrupted runs and an island in the middle of the room with every edge on show. 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. Two heights and a return, settled before any stone is cut.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. A phased fit-out gets phased templating, one lobby at a time.