Restaurant and cafe table tops in Campden Hill

Yes. Campden Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W8. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. 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. Delivery is booked to the room, not to a half day. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. 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. Converted houses mean several sizes, not one. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. What the room does to the base matters more than the wall.

A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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. A cellar stair is not a route for stone. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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. Empty frames go back on the van the same trip.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. Held stock is worth more than a discount. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. What one room learns, the next room uses.

Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. 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. Squares off one slab and rounds off another, where that is cheaper. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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 thin top over a wide plate wants a pad underneath. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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. Decisions made remotely still need a physical sample.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. 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. 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. Uneven flags outside are why outdoor feet adjust.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Tops travel upright in a frame, faces apart.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. Chimney breasts are often taken out at ground level and left standing above, so the middle of the run is newer wall than the two ends of it. 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. Priced per piece, with the shape written against each one.

A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. What gets damaged on a route like that is a corner, and a table corner is polished, exposed and at precisely the height of a door frame. A dozen pieces is a dozen carries, not one lift.