Reception counters and desks in Wood Street

Yes. Wood Street is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E17. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Waltham Forest. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. 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. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Cornice runs round the head of the wall, so the wall units stop under it and the splashback band is trapped between two things that are not going to move. 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. A desk seen from a whole floor is finished on every edge. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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 front edge runs straight whatever the wall behind it does.

Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. 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. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. 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.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. Counters are nearly always one-offs, so the saving that comes from repeating a specification is not usually on the table here. The counter is quoted with the programme written beside it. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. 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. Where the lobby stays open, the work runs outside opening hours.

A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. The return between the high counter and the low shelf never nests neatly, and it is what decides how much slab the desk swallows. The counter shape follows the queue first and the slab second. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. A lobby wall that leans shows itself along the back return, so that edge is cut to the line the wall actually takes. Where the plaster bows, the counter is drawn away from it. 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. The knee recess is not negotiable, whoever is signing.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. 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.

Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. A lobby is one of the few places a piece can be staged, so the counter comes in early and stands on trestles until the carcass is ready for it. The upper counter is the piece that has to make the turn.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. Where the floor falls away across a lobby the carcass is packed level first, because the top cannot correct anything sitting under it. A shadow gap solves what a scribe cannot.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. 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 chimney breast is usually still standing with the opening blocked up, and the alcoves either side of it are rarely the same width as each other. 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. Clinic counters carry a card reader and a screen at the low level.