Reception counters and desks in Thamesmead

Yes. Thamesmead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE28, SE2. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Outside opening hours is usually when the kerb is free. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Door openings and the hall were set to a generous standard, so a long piece turns in from the front without being stood on end to do it. Estates of this kind carry the buildings that serve them, and every one has a counter the public queues at: a housing office, a health centre, a community hall, a library. A converted house wants a counter that reads as furniture. Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. 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. Column casings take machined returns, not filler.

The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. 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 long top on edge sweeps wider than the crew carrying it. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Whoever holds the lease usually holds the loading bay.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. 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. Fit-out programmes slip toward the counter, never away from it.

Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. 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 material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A lightweight stud partition will not carry a breakfast bar or a peninsula end, and stone finds that out faster than laminate ever did. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. What is out of true gets measured, not talked around. 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. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. Where a managing agent has to approve the work, the drawing goes out in a form they can sign without ever standing in the lobby. The serving height comes from the standard, not from the landlord.

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 fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. A lobby floor that falls is packed out under the joinery.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. 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.

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. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. The knee recess makes any twist in the carcass visible, since a shelf with nothing beneath it has nowhere for a packer to go. Nothing on a counter is corrected with sealant.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. 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 joiner has to finish before we are able to start.