Reception counters and desks in Stonecot Hill

Yes. Stonecot Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM3. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Sutton. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Waiting time on a counter job is the most expensive hour of it. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original quarry-tiled floors sit lower than a later screed, so a run crossing that junction needs the units packed to one level. Practices in this stock are usually converted houses on or behind an interwar parade: a dental surgery, a veterinary practice or a small office with its reception in what was the front room. Nurseries want a hatch, and the hatch is on the same drawing. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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 template is taken to the carcass as built.

A hall radiator or a coat hook at shoulder height takes a hundred millimetres off the usable width, and a hundred millimetres is often the entire margin. 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. Every re-grip near a finished front edge is planned out beforehand. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. The counter comes off the van first and goes in last.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of 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. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. A phased fit-out gets phased templating, one lobby at a time. 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. 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. What the operator needs at the shelf outranks the elevation.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Support positions go on the drawing before the top is nested. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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. Twist in a carcass shows first at the transaction shelf. Confirm whether the reception is at ground level or up the stair, and send the carcass drawing with the chimney breast and any bay recorded on it. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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. A landlord's shell and a tenant's desk are two separate briefs.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A long counter magnifies every millimetre the carcass is out.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. A shallow shelf still needs a support run of its own.

Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. 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. 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 knee recess is not a variable between sites.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. 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. 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. The public side and the staff side take different details.