Restaurant and cafe table tops in Battersea Park

Yes. Battersea Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW11. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. The van stays until the last piece is on its base. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen was a service room at the back of the flat, so it is a long way from the front door along a corridor with two turns in it. A high street of this kind has flats over the trade, and both of those facts set the shape of the day. A basement is for prep and not for storing stone. A brick pier standing into the run divides it in two, and the join goes against the pier where a clear wall would have needed no join at all. None of that is scribed against on a table, since it stands clear of every wall, so the awkwardness moves from the back edge to the floor and the base. A pedestal is checked for spread before a size is agreed.

A communal flight is out of use while a piece is on it, so the carry is timed so nobody is trying to pass on a half-landing. Tops travel upright in a padded frame, and it is the frame rather than the person carrying it that has to clear the tightest turn. Handling is where a polished edge gets damaged. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Where the standing is short the pieces are counted off at the tail lift against the plan rather than checked once they are already inside. A quiet hour is worth more to us than a close bay.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. 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. Fit-out dates are worked backwards from the opening. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. 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. The bases usually stay and only the pieces change.

Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. 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. Offcuts from a counter become the smaller pieces. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Where the structure cannot be cut into, the stone is relieved instead, and a relief that deep changes both the yield off the slab and how the piece is handled. 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 column in the room is designed around, not cut around. Confirm the permitted loading times and any residents’ hours with the managing agent, and settle the edge profile and the thickness before the slab is cut. 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. 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. Written approval before cutting, every time.

Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Banquette seating wants a cantilever foot under it.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. What decides the cut list here is the seating plan rather than the room shape, and one repeated table size nests far better than six one-offs. A set is laid out together before anything is wrapped.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. No money changes hands before the template. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Freeholder consent, a works agreement and proof of insurance are often wanted before a van is allowed to unload. What a table top needs from us is a size, a shape and the base plate it has to be drilled to, and very little else. One piece per table, with no join in it anywhere.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A fitted stair carpet is either lifted or covered, because grit trodden into it under work boots does more harm than the carry itself. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Packaging goes back on the van rather than into the yard.