Reception counters and desks in Wimbledon Park

Yes. Wimbledon Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW19. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. A commercial frontage rarely has anywhere to stop, so the unload is timed rather than assumed and the counter pieces come off first. Outside opening hours is usually when the kerb is free. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Sash windows in the addition sit low and the sill can land under standard worktop height, so the top is notched round it or the run stops short of it. 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 knee recess is argued over hardest where the floor is shallowest. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. 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 template is taken to the carcass as built.

Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. 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 waits on the van until there is somewhere to stand it. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Whoever holds the lease usually holds the loading bay.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation 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. 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. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. Where the lobby stays open, the work runs outside opening hours. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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. A spare offcut kept back can save a whole counter later.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. A counter has the same argument in miniature: a straight run nests kindly on a slab, and every return costs yield. The counter shape follows the queue first and the slab second. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. Twist in a carcass shows first at the transaction shelf. 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. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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 knee recess is not negotiable, whoever is signing.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. A back-of-counter return is a separate piece with its own edges.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. Where the front is curved the top is cut on a waterjet, and the carcass has to be built to the same radius rather than close to it. Every change of plane is a join waiting to be placed well.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The kitchen normally sits in the back addition or a later side return, which puts the run against the oldest and least straight wall in the building. 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. Front of house is read from standing height and from seated height both.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. 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. Lath and plaster, a settled floor and a hall with a turn in it are the three things that decide how this job runs. What decides the piece sizes is the lobby and the way into it, since a counter top runs longer than a kitchen worktop and has no cabinet run to break it up. The desk is furniture, so all four edges get the same finish.