Reception counters and desks in Woodside Park

Yes. Woodside Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N12. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. Loading bays belonging to the building are booked by whoever holds the lease, and that is seldom whoever ordered the counter. Packaging leaves with us rather than filling the lobby. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Floors are boards over joists with a solid floor only in the service rooms, and the two meet somewhere in the middle of the kitchen. Large houses in these streets get converted into clinics, nurseries, small offices and members' rooms, and the reception ends up in a hall that was never meant to hold a desk. Goods lifts in old warehouses take longer pieces than most buildings. 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. 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.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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. Trestles go up in the lobby before anything is unwrapped. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. The upper counter is the longest piece on the van, so the tail lift needs the full swing radius clear on the pavement. A bay suspension is a line on the quote, not a surprise.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop fabrication. 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. The counter is the last trade in and the first thing judged.

A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. 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 public side and the staff side take different details. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. Confirm the edge profile and which faces receive it, and tell us whether a screen, hatch or gate forms part of the counter before the carcass is built. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. What is wanted there is a counter reading as furniture rather than as a shop fitting, which puts the edge profile, the returns and the finish on the back of the counter under real scrutiny. The knee recess is argued over hardest where the floor is shallowest.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. 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. Nothing is drawn square that the carcass did not build square.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. 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 transaction shelf goes almost anywhere the upper top will not.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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.