Reception counters and desks in Well Hall

Yes. Well Hall is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE9. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. 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. 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. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The back door frequently opens straight into the kitchen, which is the best carry route in the house and the one people forget to mention. Practices in this stock are usually converted houses on or behind an interwar parade: a dental surgery, a veterinary practice or a small office with its reception in what was the front room. A shopfront door caps the counter length before the slab does. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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. Nothing on a counter is corrected with sealant.

A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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. Where the lift will not take it, the join is designed rather than risked. 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. 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 claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop replacement. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. One visit, because a lobby cannot be closed twice. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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 counter, one drawing, and no second bite at it.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. 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. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. The template is taken to the carcass as built. Confirm whether the reception is at ground level or up the stair, and send the carcass drawing with the chimney breast and any bay recorded on it. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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. A desk in a re-let space is specified for the next occupier too.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. The old larder leaves behind a thick cold shelf and a vent brick through the outer wall, and both have to go before that wall reads flat. 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 is measured in the lobby it will stand in.

Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. 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 counter shape follows the queue first and the slab second.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. An external corner on a counter is seen from both sides at once, so it is mitred rather than butted and the pattern is carried round it. A back-of-counter return is a separate piece with its own edges.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. Suction pads want a clean dry face, and lobby dust is not that.