Restaurant and cafe table tops in Covent Garden

Yes. Covent Garden is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are WC2. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone 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. One stop, and the count is proved before we leave. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Listing and conservation conditions apply to a good number of these, which constrains what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what goes on top of the units. 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. Chair backs do more damage than plates ever do. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. 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. A step in the floor is a base decision.

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. 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 dozen pieces is a dozen carries, not one lift. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. A shared forecourt is booked rather than chanced.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands 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. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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. A second site is quoted from the same specification. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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. Held stock is worth more than a discount.

The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. 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. Rectangles nest and rounds do not. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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. Every piece is offered up to its own pedestal. 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. A short term does not justify a surface that fails early.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Nothing is trimmed on site to make it fit.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. A basement kitchen has a flagged or concrete floor laid straight onto the ground, so it is solid, cold and rarely within ten millimetres of level. 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. Old floors fall away and the feet take it up.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. 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. The gangway sets the dimension, not the drawing.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. A fit-out programme runs to an opening date that does not move, so the sizes are frozen and the slab committed earlier than most jobs need. What one room learns, the next room uses.