Reception counters and desks in West Brompton

Yes. West Brompton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW5, SW10. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. The tail lift needs pavement, not simply a space. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The lean-to roof drains into a valley gutter against the addition next door, and a long leak there shows at the head of the kitchen wall rather than on the ceiling. That entrance is what caps the counter, because a shopfront door and the step in front of it will take far less than a full-length top, so the run is broken over a support in the carcass rather than gambled on. Goods lifts in old warehouses take longer pieces than most buildings. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through 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. What is out of true gets measured, not talked around.

Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. 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. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Outside opening hours is usually when the kerb is free.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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.

On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. 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. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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 lobby floor that falls is packed out under the joinery. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. Access and out-of-hours permission sit with the building, not the tenant.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. Nothing on a counter is corrected with sealant.

If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. A picture rail, a deep skirting and a moulded architrave all sit in the way of anything that assumes flat wall from floor to ceiling. 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.

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 workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. The bathroom upstairs sits directly over the kitchen, so its waste comes down in a boxed corner from floor to ceiling that no worktop is going to move. 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. The knee recess is argued over hardest where the floor is shallowest.