Restaurant and cafe table tops in Belsize Park

Yes. Belsize Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW3. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Where the household has used up the visitor permits it gets for the year, the remaining options are a suspension or a paid bay and both belong on the quote. 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. A long push from the kerb is planned, not discovered. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The kitchen is generally a rear extension or a knocked-through pair of rooms, so part of the perimeter is old wall and part of it is new. That is fine, but it has to be drawn: a room of one-offs prices differently from a room of repeats, and the difference is real rather than a markup. Small rooms want small pieces and steady bases. A partition that gives when you lean on it will give under someone sitting at an overhang, and a bonded mitre nearby is where that movement shows first. 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. Every piece is offered up to its own pedestal.

A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full flight. 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. Packaging goes back on the van rather than into the yard. Estate roads inside a controlled zone are sometimes managed privately rather than by the council, which changes who has to be asked. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Frames come off before pallets so the floor stays clear.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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 programme decides the delivery, not the workshop.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. 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. A set is laid out together before anything is wrapped. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. 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. Nothing is trimmed on site to make it fit. Send a plan of each room with its table sizes against it, and say which covers are outdoors so the material can be split before anything is priced. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. The length of the lease is a legitimate reason to specify differently, and nobody should be talked into a decade of surface for five years of trading. A licence to alter is not needed for something unfixed.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. There is a door to the garden, a door to the hall and often a door to a utility, so the perimeter run is interrupted three times. Hospitality in an area like this is often a converted house, so the dining space is several small rooms rather than one and the sizes vary room by room. Communal lengths belong in the larger units.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where the stairwell is narrow enough that the stone travels on edge the polished face runs within an inch of the plaster, so the walls get boarded as well as the steps. 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. Pieces are numbered so none of them is carried twice.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A window sill or a radiator on the half-landing takes the corner out of the turn at precisely the point the piece needs that corner. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. The last thing carried in is the first one set out.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. 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. Two-seaters and four-seaters come off one slab run.