Restaurant and cafe table tops in Hammersmith

Yes. Hammersmith is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of the borough. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. 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. Deliveries land before the doors open wherever possible. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

A long piece has to come through the front door, down the hall, round the newel post and through a doorway with a step down into the addition. 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. A shell unit is drawn before it is measured. 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 rocking table is a floor problem and not a stone one.

A carpeted hall runs a trolley badly, so a heavy piece is carried rather than rolled from the threshold in. 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. Polished faces never travel touching each other. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. The plan on the van matches the plan on the floor.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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 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. Repeat work is quoted against the original, not from scratch. 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. 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. Fit-out dates are worked backwards from the opening.

Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket 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. A circle wastes its corners, and the quote says so. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

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. 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. The gangway is a measurement rather than an impression. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. 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. Who pays and who approves are worth naming early.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. 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. 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. Fixed seating fixes the dimension it faces.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. The hall is the only way in and out for whoever lives there, so it is cleared and then kept clear for as long as pieces are 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. The frame needs the clearance the piece does.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Where the turn inside is tight the piece gets turned on the path and brought in already on edge, which needs room in front of the door as well as behind it. 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 stack of tops is a weight before it is a delivery.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Overhang past the plate is where a table tips.