Restaurant and cafe table tops in Greenford Green

Yes. Greenford Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. 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. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. 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. A narrow frontage is a small diameter, honestly stated. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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. The clearance under a fixed shelf is measured, not assumed.

A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Empty frames go back on the van the same trip.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. 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. 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. Repeat work is quoted against the original, not from scratch.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. 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.

A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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. Room by room, since no two of them are the same. 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. 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. A managed building wants notice and it gets notice.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Solid brick with a sand and cement render is firm to work against and reliably out of plumb across the length of a run. 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 seating plan sets the sizes before the slab does.

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. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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.

Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. These kitchens have usually been retiled twice and knocked through once, and both of those leave marks the worktop has to deal with. 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. A spare top is the cheapest insurance in the room.