Restaurant and cafe table tops in Harrow Road

Yes. Harrow Road is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W9, W10. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. 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. 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. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Front doors off the deck open into a lobby barely wider than the door itself, and the turn out of it is a right angle. The trade in this stock is a row of units under a block: a roller shutter, a shallow room behind it and a paved forecourt in front with bollards across the approach. A shopfront door is the only way in on most parades. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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.

A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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. Bases go in first and tops go in last. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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 really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. 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. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should. Four kitchens ordered together take one template visit and one delivery, and that is where the saving comes from rather than from a discount on the stone. 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 programme decides the delivery, not the workshop.

A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. 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. Two-seaters and four-seaters come off one slab run. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. Tell us how close a van can get to the door, and whether the tables have to be moved regularly, since that decides the thickness before anything else does. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. The length of the lease is a legitimate reason to specify differently, and nobody should be talked into a decade of surface for five years of trading. Bolted to your own bases, so they leave when you do.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The ceiling is a concrete soffit with a skim on it, so there is nothing to fix into overhead and no void to hide anything in. 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. Wine, citrus and a bleach cloth decide the material.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Where the kitchen has been opened into the living room the opening was trimmed with a steel, and a stub of the old wall was left standing at one end. A dining room orders tops in sets, so the question is never one piece but twenty that have to read as one colour. The underside matters, because a hand goes under every edge.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Deck access means a long open walkway from the lift or the stair to the front door, and that walk happens with the piece on edge in whatever weather there is. The trade in this stock is a row of units under a block, usually a roller shutter with a shallow room behind it. Small rooms want small pieces and steady bases.