Reception counters and desks in St Katharine Docks

Yes. St Katharine Docks is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1W. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Where the goods entrance is round the back, the carry is priced from there. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The handrail is fixed to the wall side of the flight, so the clear width at hand height is a hundred millimetres less than the stair measures at the tread. Estates of this kind carry the buildings that serve them, and every one has a counter the public queues at: a housing office, a health centre, a community hall, a library. A desk seen from a whole floor is finished on every edge. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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 counter standing proud of the wall has nothing to hide behind.

Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. 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 sized to the way in before it is sized to the slab. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. An early slot buys an empty street and an empty lobby at once.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Apertures change from desk to desk, so each drawing is its own. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. 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. A weekend fit is planned as a weekend fit from the outset.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. 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. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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. Tell us the hours the building can be worked in and whether the lobby stays open, and send photographs of every corner so we can find the ducts before we draw. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. 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. Where the freeholder keeps the lobby, the finishes are protected first.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. A shelf over a knee recess cannot be packed, so it is cut true.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. An external corner on a counter is seen from both sides at once, so it is mitred rather than butted and the pattern is carried round it. A shallow shelf still needs a support run of its own.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. The kitchen door is a fire door onto a lobby that is also the escape route, so nothing can be stood in that lobby while the work goes on. These are the counters where the lower transaction shelf earns its keep, because the people served at it are the people the standard was written for, so the knee space and the clear approach to it are checked on site rather than taken off a drawing. Clinic counters carry a card reader and a screen at the low level.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. The first kitchen was fitted by the authority to a standard layout, so the waste, the gas point and the sockets are all still where that layout put them. A housing office counter is used hard and cleaned harder, so the surface is specified for wear and the front edge for being leaned on all day. The lobby was finished by somebody else, and the counter joins it.