Reception counters and desks in Wealdstone

Yes. Wealdstone is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA3. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. A booked bay costs less than an hour of a crew standing still. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The staircase rises over the back room in a good number of these, so a sloping bulkhead sits over one end of the run and a piece cannot be stood on edge beneath it. The commercial work around housing of this age is shopfront: a narrow deep unit off a parade, with the reception running back from the door into the depth of the plan. Steel and brick leave a desk nothing to lean against. 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. Column casings take machined returns, not filler.

Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. 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. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. The tail lift needs pavement, not simply a space.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. A counter in a working building is an evening job. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. One visit, because a lobby cannot be closed twice.

The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Nothing is drawn square that the carcass did not build square. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

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. 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. What is out of true gets measured, not talked around. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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 drawing is signed by whoever is paying for it.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. 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. The return between the two levels is the piece everything works off.

Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. One counter, one drawing, and no second bite at it.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. A reception fit is often booked outside opening hours precisely because that is when the kerb in front of the building is free. Outside opening hours is usually when the kerb is free.

A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. 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. Suction pads want a clean dry face, and lobby dust is not that.