Reception counters and desks in Temple

Yes. Temple is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC4Y. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. 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. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Many were built with a solid sub-floor to the rear rooms, so the kitchen floor is concrete and level while the front of the house is suspended timber. That entrance is what caps the counter, because a shopfront door and the step in front of it will take far less than a full-length top, so the run is broken over a support in the carcass rather than gambled on. A converted house wants a counter that reads as furniture. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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. Twist in a carcass shows first at the transaction shelf.

Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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 join forced by a doorway still lands over a carcass support. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. A repeatable counter needs a repeatable material. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. 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. Fit-out programmes slip toward the counter, never away from it.

Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. A counter reads as one plane or as several, and that is a drawing decision. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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 long counter magnifies every millimetre the carcass is out. Send photographs taken walking from the pavement through the door to where the counter will stand, along with the carcass dimensions once the joiner has fixed it. 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. Whoever signs it inherits the join positions with it.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The rear wall of the addition carries both the back door and the window, which leaves very little unbroken wall for a run to sit against. Two working surfaces at two heights, a return between them and clear knee space under the lower one: that is the shape almost every counter ends up being, whatever the front elevation promised. Apertures for cable and card reader are machined, never drilled in a lobby.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. 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. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. The scribe is cut in the shop, eased on site, and no further.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Where the counter turns, the pattern turns with it.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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. The joiner has to finish before we are able to start.