Restaurant and cafe table tops in Bishop's Park

Yes. Bishop's Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. The practical answer is to check the fixture list before the date is offered, because a template slot lost to a road closure cannot be recovered that week. 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. Empty frames go back on the van the same trip. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Where the addition is single storey the ceiling follows a lean-to roof, so one side of the room loses height and a full-height panel has a sloping stop. 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. What the unit was before decides what it needs now. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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.

Where the turn inside is tight the piece gets turned on the path and brought in already on edge, which needs room in front of the door as well as behind it. 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. Two hands to a piece, however light it looks. Where an event closes the road entirely, the van cannot be moved once it is in, which is a different problem from not being able to park at all. 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 suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. 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. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it. 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. 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. A second site is quoted from the same specification.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. 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. Two-seaters and four-seaters come off one slab run. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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 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. What moves out with you is worth choosing well.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. 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. What the room does to the base matters more than the wall.

The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The original front door is narrow and the hall is often the only way in, which puts a ceiling on the longest single piece. 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. Base spread against top size is checked before a size is agreed.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Original quarry tiles survive under a later vinyl in many of these, and lifting the units off them shows how far the floor has fallen towards the garden end. That measurement comes first: once the gangway is fixed the table dimension follows, and on most of these frontages that means a six hundred millimetre square for two and a seven hundred millimetre round where the room widens towards the back. Frontage, gangway and covers, in that order.

Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. 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. 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. Corners take the knocks, so corners get the padding.