Reception counters and desks in West Dulwich

Yes. West Dulwich is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE21. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Internal walls are lath on timber studs while the flank walls are brick, so two walls in the same kitchen take a fixing completely differently. The commercial work around housing of this age is shopfront: a narrow unit off a high-street parade, entered up a step, with the reception running back from the door into the depth of the plan. The service road at the back is often the real way in. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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. The knee recess is checked for square before the shelf is cut.

Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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. The counter is the last thing in and the first thing looked at. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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 especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. 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. 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. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Matching across sites means matching blocks, not matching names. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. The counter is quoted with the programme written beside it.

Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. Every change of plane is a join waiting to be placed well. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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. Two levels means two datums, and they are reconciled on paper. 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. A desk in a re-let space is specified for the next occupier too.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. A cast iron soil stack runs down the outside of the rear wall, so moving the sink means a fresh penetration through solid brick. 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 reception is in use the morning after, and that sets the sequence.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. 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.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. Shelf depth is set by the knee space underneath it.

A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. 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. Working out of hours costs less than a chipped counter does.