Reception counters and desks in Streatham Hill

Yes. Streatham Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW2. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. A red route puts a clock on a counter that will not be rushed. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. That makes the counter a freestanding thing on its own carcass, drawn to clear the skirting rather than to sit against it, with the fixings agreed before the drawing is finished. Steel and brick leave a desk nothing to lean against. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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 carcass is levelled before the top is ever offered up.

A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. 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. Working out of hours costs less than a chipped counter does. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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 bay is booked by the hour, pieces come off in fitting order.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating. 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. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Reception work is booked around the building staying open. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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. A desk somebody sits at all day is specified for wear.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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 shelf over a knee recess cannot be packed, so it is cut true. Measure the lift car internally, photograph the stair turn and the hall, and confirm with the managing agent what may and may not be fixed into. 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. A desk approved in principle is not a desk approved to cut.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The back return follows the wall as the wall leans.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. External walls are thick and the run under the window sits in a deep reveal that has to be templated rather than assumed square. Blocks of this age carry a porter's desk in the entrance hall, and that hall is usually a protected interior where nothing may be fixed into the original finishes. Nurseries want a hatch, and the hatch is on the same drawing.

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. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. Column casings take machined returns, not filler.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. These kitchens are full of boxed soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing usually stops short of the ceiling. A listed lobby means the counter stands on its own carcass rather than being fixed back to panelling, and the fixings are agreed before the drawing is finished. The building stays open, so the counter goes in after hours.