Restaurant and cafe table tops in Harringay

Yes. Harringay is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N4, N8. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. 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.

Original quarry tiles survive under a later vinyl in many of these, and lifting the units off them shows how far the floor has fallen towards the garden end. 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. Flats above set the hours the work can happen in. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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. Levelled at the feet, never packed under the stone.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. Pieces come off the van in the order the room fills. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. The plan on the van matches the plan on the floor.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. Fit-out dates are worked backwards from the opening. 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. 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. The bases usually stay and only the pieces change.

A single long run down one side puts every cut-out in one piece, so the sink, the hob and any drainer grooves all take material out of the same length. 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. One repeated size cuts better than six one-offs. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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 column in the room is designed around, not cut around.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A galley run down a side-return extension usually measures longer than a slab will give in one length, so a join is designed in from the start rather than discovered. 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. Cut from the same run as the counter, so the room agrees.

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. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. 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. 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 trolley run across a forecourt gets boarded like any other.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. The outrigger shares a party wall with the addition next door for its whole length, so one long side of the kitchen is solid brick with another kitchen on the far side of it. 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 rear yard is worth an hour of the day.