Restaurant and cafe table tops in Hounslow Heath

Yes. Hounslow Heath is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. The plan on the van matches the plan on the floor. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A maisonette puts the kitchen on one of two levels, so an internal staircase may be part of the route as well as the communal one. 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 basement is for prep and not for storing stone. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. A pedestal is checked for spread before a size is agreed.

Concierge buildings want the goods entrance, a booked lift and proof of insurance, all of which is straightforward when it is asked for a week out. 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. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. A long push from the kerb is planned, not discovered.

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 splashbacks & upstands. 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. 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. A refit is a resurface where the pedestals are sound. 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. One set of decisions, repeated across the whole room.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. 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. Every dimension quoted is a finished dimension. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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 column in the room is designed around, not cut around. 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. Method statements, insurance certificates and named operatives are wanted before a crew is cleared to attend, all of which is routine when it is asked for a week out. 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.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. 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. 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. Frames come off before pallets so the floor stays clear.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. 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. 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. Banquette seating wants a cantilever foot under it.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. 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. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The balcony door frequently opens off the kitchen, which puts a threshold, a draught and a well-used route through one end of the run. 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. The underside matters, because a hand goes under every edge.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. 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. 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 rocking table is a floor problem and not a stone one.