Restaurant and cafe table tops in Alexandra Park

Yes. Alexandra Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N22, N10. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. A table order comes off the van as a stack of frames and a pallet of bases, and both of those need somewhere to stand before either is moved. The plan on the van matches the plan on the floor. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The rear wall is usually a single brick thick and has been rendered, patched and re-rendered, so it bows in and out along the length of the run. The trade on streets like these sits in a parade of narrow shopfronts, so the dining room is long and thin and the covers are won by the width of the gangway rather than by the size of the room. Covers decide the count, and the count decides the order. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. A column, a boxed duct or a fixed bench in a dining room is designed around with a shape cut to suit rather than notched on site. A shallow room decides the diameter early.

A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. A table order is many small pieces rather than one long one, so the route decides how many trips the delivery takes rather than how big anything can be. Bases go in first and tops go in last. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. A long push from the kerb is planned, not discovered.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop splashbacks & upstands, worktop templating and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Table work arrives as a batch by its nature, and a batch means one slab run rather than the same colour ordered twice a year apart. A breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. A room opening in a second phase is worth naming now, while the material is still on the ground and a match is a telephone call. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. A table top answers to none of that, since it meets no wall and needs no scribe, but the pieces come off the same slab as the counter and the colour has to carry across both. Nothing is cut until the seating plan stops moving. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. Where a floor falls away, the levelling is done by winding out the feet under each base rather than by packing anything under the stone. Sharp corners are eased wherever people pass. Send the seating plan with the gangway widths marked, and bring in one of the bases or the maker’s drawing so the bolt centres can be measured properly. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A table top bolted to a base you already own is loose furniture rather than a fixture, so it leaves with the operator at the end of a term. A brand standard is followed to the letter or not at all.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Weight low, spread wide, and it stays put.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Where an operator changes hands the bases usually stay, so a refit becomes a resurface and the saving comes from what is already bolted down. The programme decides the delivery, not the workshop.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. Table tops sit outside all of that, because a top touches no wall at all and every one of its edges is profiled, polished and on show. Chosen for service, not for the photographs on opening night.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Deep original skirting is often left in behind the units, standing them off the wall, so the back edge of the stone is plotted where the carcasses actually sit. A unit in an old parade rarely has rear access, which means every top and every base comes through the front door in the order it will be set out. A narrow frontage is a small diameter, honestly stated.