Reception counters and desks in Tooting

Yes. Tooting is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW17. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. The counter comes off the van first and goes in last. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

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. 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. Old shopfronts were never sized for a three-metre top. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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.

Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. 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. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. A booked bay costs less than an hour of a crew standing still.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. A second kitchen or a kitchenette in an annexe is a small job with the same fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines as a large one. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Apertures change from desk to desk, so each drawing is its own. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. 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 weekend fit is planned as a weekend fit from the outset.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. The front edge is the one everybody touches, so it is drawn first. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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. Whoever signs it inherits the join positions with it.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. A good number of these blocks are large panel system builds, where the wall is a precast unit with a grouted joint and nothing gets cut into it. 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. Front of house is read from standing height and from seated height both.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Setting out starts at the entrance end and works inward.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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. Where the lift will not take it, the join is designed rather than risked.

It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. The first kitchen units were metal and screwed straight into the blockwork, and their plugs are still in the wall behind whatever plaster went over them. 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. The service road at the back is often the real way in.