Reception counters and desks in Thames View

Yes. Thames View is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The hot water cylinder sits in a cupboard opening off the kitchen or the landing above it, and the pipework to it drops through the corner of the room. 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. A converted house wants a counter that reads as furniture. 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. A shelf over a knee recess cannot be packed, so it is cut true.

Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. 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. Lobby floors are boarded before the first piece comes off the trolley. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. The counter comes off the van first and goes in last.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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 repeatable counter needs a repeatable material. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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.

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. A shallow shelf still needs a support run of its own. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

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. 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. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The ceiling is a concrete soffit with a skim on it, so there is nothing to fix into overhead and no void to hide anything in. 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. A counter top has no wall behind it to hide a poor edge.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. 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. The public side and the staff side take different details.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. A reception fit is often booked outside opening hours precisely because that is when the kerb in front of the building is free. A booked bay costs less than an hour of a crew standing still.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. 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. The upper counter is the piece that has to make the turn.