Restaurant and cafe table tops in Brook Green

Yes. Brook Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W6, W14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Loading rules are confirmed with the operator beforehand. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Sash windows in the addition sit low and the sill can land under standard worktop height, so the top is notched round it or the run stops short of it. 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. 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. 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. Nothing is trimmed on site to make it fit.

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. 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. Corners take the knocks, so corners get the padding. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. 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.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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. A second kitchen or a kitchenette in an annexe is a small job with the same fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines as a large one. 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. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. 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. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it.

On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. 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. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

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. 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. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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. The operator chooses and the freeholder rarely has to.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The boiler has usually been moved out of the main house into the addition, and its flue, its pipework and its condensate all cross the wall the run wants. 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. A narrow frontage is a small diameter, honestly stated.

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. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. 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.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. 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 come off the van in the order the room fills.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. A trolley run across a forecourt gets boarded like any other.