Reception counters and desks in West Kensington

Yes. West Kensington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. A market day closes the street to traffic for the morning and hands it back in the afternoon, which moves the visit rather than cancelling it. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. One space, one visit, and the counter goes in whole. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

The kitchen was a service room at the back of the flat, so it is a long way from the front door along a corridor with two turns in it. A block of this age carries a porter's desk in the entrance hall, and that hall is usually a protected interior with panelling, an original floor and finishes nobody is allowed to fix into. The building around the lobby decides the counter more than the brief does. 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. 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.

A short run of external steps before the communal door means a piece is lifted twice before the staircase proper has even started. 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. A timed school street shuts the road either side of the school day, so the van goes in between those two windows or it does not go in. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. Where the goods entrance is round the back, the carry is priced from there.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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. Where the lobby stays open, the work runs outside opening hours.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. A lobby floor that falls is packed out under the joinery. Measure the lift car internally, photograph the stair turn and the hall, and confirm with the managing agent what may and may not be fixed into. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. An event-day suspension can override a bay that is perfectly usable the rest of the week, so a booked space gets checked again nearer the time. A reception fit is often booked outside opening hours precisely because that is when the kerb in front of the building is free. An early slot buys an empty street and an empty lobby at once.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. 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. 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.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. These kitchens were service rooms once, so they are long, narrow and further from the entrance than the floor plan suggests. 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. Where the join lands is a sightline question before it is a slab question.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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. The counter shape follows the queue first and the slab second.