Restaurant and cafe table tops in Headstone

Yes. Headstone is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA2, HA1. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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. A suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The chimney breast in the corner has usually been left in place, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends. Parades of this period usually keep a service road or a yard behind them, so a full order can arrive at the back and the dining room stays laid up while it does. Long hours push the choice towards a harder face. 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. 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. The gangway is a measurement rather than an impression.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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. Nothing is carried past a chair still in the gangway. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Pieces are staged inside before the van is moved off.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop replacement. 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. 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. The bases usually stay and only the pieces change. 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. A refit is a resurface where the pedestals are sound.

The short run at the head of a U usually sits under a window, so that piece is scribed on three sides at once and has nowhere left to be pushed back to. 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. Squares off one slab and rounds off another, where that is cheaper. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

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. 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. Fixed seating fixes the dimension it faces. Confirm how many covers go outside, and tell us whether the outdoor bases share the pattern of the indoor ones, since they often do not. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. 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. The invoice and the approval carry the same name.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. These kitchens have been retiled at least twice, and stripping the tiles takes the bottom band of plaster with them because the old laminate ran underneath rather than up to them. The units are wider than an older shopfront, which is what makes a long wall of two-seaters work, and a repeated size is the single cheapest decision on the order because it nests tightly and makes a spare piece worth holding. A shopfront door is the only way in on most parades.

Nothing is payable in advance of the template. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The old larder leaves behind a thick cold shelf and a vent brick through the outer wall, and both have to go before that wall reads flat. 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. A spare top is the cheapest insurance in the room.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. 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. 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. One set of decisions, repeated across the whole room.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. The original kitchen was a small rear room with a larder and a back door, and nearly all of them have since been opened into the dining room. Parades of this period usually keep a service yard behind them, so tops and bases arrive at the back and the dining room stays laid up while they do. Small rooms want small pieces and steady bases.