Restaurant and cafe table tops in Hendon

Yes. Hendon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW4. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. 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. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

External walls are thick and the run under the window sits in a deep reveal that has to be templated rather than assumed square. A high street of this kind has flats over the trade, and both of those facts set the shape of the day. Old floors fall away and the feet take it up. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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 measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. 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. Wrapping stays on until the pedestal is standing. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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 really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on 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. The bases usually stay and only the pieces change. 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. 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. A refit is a resurface where the pedestals are sound.

Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. 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. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. 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. A pedestal is checked for spread before a size is agreed. Confirm the permitted loading times and any residents’ hours with the managing agent, and settle the edge profile and the thickness before the slab is cut. 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. Loose furniture rather than a landlord fixture.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The communal stair is stone with a cast iron balustrade, and the winders leave very little room to turn a long piece. 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 stone is straightforward and the base fixing is the job.

How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. 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. 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. One set of decisions, repeated across the whole room.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. The pavement stays walkable while the frames come off.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Freeholder consent, a works agreement and proof of insurance are often wanted before a van is allowed to unload. What a table top needs from us is a size, a shape and the base plate it has to be drilled to, and very little else. Sizes agreed on paper before any slab is committed.