Restaurant and cafe table tops in Brondesbury

Yes. Brondesbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW6, NW2. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. 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. 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. Loading rules are confirmed with the operator beforehand. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

A deep butler sink and a boiling tap on the same length put two heavy cut-outs within a metre of each other. Hospitality in an area like this is usually a converted house or an old inn, so the dining space is several small rooms rather than one, and each room takes a different table size. Communal lengths belong in the larger units. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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. The clearance under a fixed shelf is measured, not assumed.

A handrail that has to come off before a piece will pass is twenty minutes at the start of the day, and it goes back on the wall before we leave. 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. The last thing carried in is the first one set out. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. 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. An unload that overruns costs a service, so it does not.

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. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. The programme decides the delivery, not the workshop. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. 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 poseur height changes the base and not the blank. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. Room by room, since no two of them are the same. 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. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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. The operator chooses and the freeholder rarely has to.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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. Nothing is scribed, because nothing meets a wall.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. 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. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. 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. Squares off one slab and rounds off another, where that is cheaper.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. The measurement that governs everything here is the gangway, because it caps the diameter before anybody has chosen a colour. Levelled at the feet, never packed under the stone.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Ceilings are high enough that an extractor over the island has a long drop, and its position is fixed before the island top is templated. 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. A basement is for prep and not for storing stone.