Restaurant and cafe table tops in Hampton Wick

Yes. Hampton Wick is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT1. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Where the van cannot wait, the room has to be ready. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. 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. Small rooms want small pieces and steady bases. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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.

Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. 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. The frame needs the clearance the piece does. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. Deliveries land before the doors open wherever possible.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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 budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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. Fit-out dates are worked backwards from the opening.

The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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. 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. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. 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. Bolted to your own bases, so they leave when you do.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Turning a heavy piece on edge indoors needs floor space at both ends of the turn, so the hall is cleared of furniture before anything comes off the van. 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 stack of tops is a weight before it is a delivery.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. The plan on the van matches the plan on the floor.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. 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. 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. A pedestal is checked for spread before a size is agreed.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The back addition is frequently a single skin of brick rendered on both faces, which takes a fixing badly and moves with the weather. 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 bases stay yours and only the surface changes.