Restaurant and cafe table tops in Feltham

Yes. Feltham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW13, TW14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. 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 quiet hour is worth more to us than a close bay. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original quarry-tiled floors sit lower than a later screed, so a run crossing that junction needs the units packed to one level. Parades of this period usually keep a service road or a yard behind them, so a full order can arrive at the back and the dining room stays laid up while it does. Frontage, gangway and covers, in that order. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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 column in the room is designed around, not cut around.

A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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. Wrapping stays on until the pedestal is standing. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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. Nothing is left on a pavement while a space is found.

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 installation and worktop templating. 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. 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. A second room is easier to match if it is mentioned now. 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. 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. Spares are cheap while the run is still on the ground.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. 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. Offcuts from a counter become the smaller pieces. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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. Banquette seating wants a cantilever foot under it. Confirm how many covers go outside, and tell us whether the outdoor bases share the pattern of the indoor ones, since they often do not. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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. Written approval before cutting, every time.

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. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. A rocking table is a floor problem and not a stone one.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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. A set is laid out together before anything is wrapped.

The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The window over the sink sits at about worktop height, so the run is set out around the sill and the reveal rather than under them. 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. Outdoor covers take a different stone from indoor ones.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. 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 kitchen sits at the rear with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the useful run is broken into two short lengths. The units are wider than an older shopfront, which is what makes a long wall of two-seaters work, and a repeated size is the single cheapest decision on the order because it nests tightly and makes a spare piece worth holding. Covers decide the count, and the count decides the order.