Restaurant and cafe table tops in Gospel Oak

Yes. Gospel Oak is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW5, NW3. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. 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. A high ceiling wants a thicker edge under it. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. Room by room, since no two of them are the same.

Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. 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. Tops travel upright in a frame, faces apart. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. 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. A shared forecourt is booked rather than chanced.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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 batch reference goes on file with the drawing. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Repeat work is quoted against the original, not from scratch.

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. 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 set is laid out together before anything is wrapped. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. Nothing is scribed, because nothing meets a 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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 specification is written so it can be repeated.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. 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. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The rear wall of the addition carries both the back door and the window, which leaves very little unbroken wall for a run to sit against. 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. The underside matters, because a hand goes under every edge.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Lower ground floor kitchens are reached by a stair with a winder in it, and the head height over that winder is lower than the room at either end. What a table top needs from us is a size, a shape and the base plate it has to be drilled to, and very little else. The bases stay yours and only the surface changes.

Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Fit-out dates are worked backwards from the opening.