Reception counters and desks in Welling

Yes. Welling is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA16. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Whoever holds the lease usually holds the loading bay. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The extension is commonly a flat-roofed addition of the seventies or eighties with a shallower floor build-up, so the two halves of the room do not sit at one level. 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. Old shopfronts were never sized for a three-metre top. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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 long counter magnifies every millimetre the carcass is out.

Spindles and a newel cap stand proud of the string, so the usable width on a turn is measured to the handrail rather than to the wall behind it. 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. Suction pads want a clean dry face, and lobby dust is not that. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. The longest counter piece decides the swing radius outside.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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 downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Support positions go on the drawing before the top is nested. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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. The scribe is cut in the shop, eased on site, and no further. 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. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. 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.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. 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. Ceilings are lath and plaster at the front and plasterboard in the extension, and the join between the two marks where the original back wall stood. Two working surfaces at two heights, a return between them and clear knee space under the lower one: that is the shape almost every counter ends up being, whatever the front elevation promised. A counter is measured in the lobby it will stand in.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. A reception fit is often booked outside opening hours precisely because that is when the kerb in front of the building is free. Packaging leaves with us rather than filling the lobby.

Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. Stone will not straighten joinery, and it will not forgive it either.

A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. The top step is rarely the end of it, because a door swinging out onto the landing has to be held back before a piece can come off the flight. 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. The counter waits on the van until there is somewhere to stand it.