Reception counters and desks in Sutton Common

Yes. Sutton Common is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM1, SM3. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Sutton. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. The tail lift needs pavement, not simply a space. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

There is usually a shared rear alley, and whether the gate onto it is unlocked decides whether long pieces come in from the back. The carcass is built around a chimney breast or into a bay, so the counter is drawn to a shape the joiner had to invent rather than to a rectangle, and the return between the upper counter and the transaction shelf rarely nests neatly against the long piece. The building stays open, so the counter goes in after hours. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the 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. A shelf over a knee recess cannot be packed, so it is cut true.

A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. 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. The counter is sized to the way in before it is sized to the slab. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. Outside opening hours is usually when the kerb is free.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, 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 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. 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.

Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. A shallow shelf still needs a support run of its own. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. 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. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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 counter stays when the tenant goes, and is chosen accordingly.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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.

The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. Nothing is payable in advance of the template. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. A side passage and a back door mean the stone rarely has to come through the house, which changes the job more than most people expect. 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. What the public leans on is the part specified hardest.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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. A join forced by a doorway still lands over a carcass support.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. 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.