Restaurant and cafe table tops in Hampton Hill

Yes. Hampton Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW12. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. 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. Empty frames go back on the van the same trip. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The front rooms sit over the shop window with a structural beam beneath them, and the floor either side of that beam is not at one level. Trade in this stock is a single shopfront with a small room behind it, so an order is a dozen pieces rather than fifty, and that changes what is worth doing rather than how it is done. Small rooms want small pieces and steady bases. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. Nothing is scribed, because nothing meets a wall.

Open-tread and cantilevered stairs give nothing to lean a piece against, so the whole weight stays on the crew for the full length of the flight. 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. Wrapping stays on until the pedestal is standing. 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. 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 suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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. Orders are counted in pieces and never in metres. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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. Ordered as a set, so the set matches.

Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. 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 poseur height changes the base and not the blank. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. Levelled at the feet, never packed under the stone. Bring in one base, or send the maker’s plate drawing, and tell us the table count including any spares you want to hold back. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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 pedestal is checked for spread before a size is agreed.

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. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A handrail that has to come off before a piece will pass is twenty minutes at the start of the day, and it goes back on the wall before we leave. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Two hands to a piece, however light it looks.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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. A second room is easier to match if it is mentioned now.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. 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. Squares off one slab and rounds off another, where that is cheaper.