Reception counters and desks in Wimbledon Chase

Yes. Wimbledon Chase is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW20, SW19. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Packaging leaves with us rather than filling the lobby. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The roof space above carries services, so a boiler flue or a soil vent can drop into a corner of the kitchen and stay exactly there. 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. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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. Stone will not straighten joinery, and it will not forgive it either.

Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. 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. Lobby floors are boarded before the first piece comes off the trolley. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. A bay suspension is a line on the quote, not a surprise.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop replacement. 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. Several desks off one slab run, or they will not match. 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. The counter is the last trade in and the first thing judged.

A U puts the sink in one leg, the hob in another and any drainer grooves in whatever is left, which spreads the cut-outs about but does not reduce the machining time. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. A counter reads as one plane or as several, and that is a drawing decision. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear 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. The front edge runs straight whatever the wall behind it does. 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. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. 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. The serving height comes from the standard, not from the landlord.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. Where the plaster bows, the counter is drawn away from it.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. The two returns in a U are close to the same size and it is tempting to nest them side by side, except that the veining then mirrors across the room and reads as deliberate for the wrong reason. 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. Where the counter turns, the pattern turns with it.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Solid brick with a sand and cement render is firm to work against and reliably out of plumb across the length of a run. 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. Stone on a joinery carcass wants that carcass square first.

Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. 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. The apertures for cable and card readers are what changes between one desk and the next, and every change is a fresh drawing rather than a variation. Apertures change from desk to desk, so each drawing is its own.