Restaurant and cafe table tops in Kentish Town

Yes. Kentish Town is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW5. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. 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 clock on the kerb changes the order of unloading. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The back addition is a narrow two-storey outrigger with a single external wall, and the kitchen galley runs the length of it. 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. A rear yard is worth an hour of the day. 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 column in the room is designed around, not cut around.

A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. 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. Battens under anything that has to wait. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. Buying twice costs more than buying deep once. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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 phased opening is planned as a single order.

A join in a long run wants to sit away from the rooflight, because a seam under direct downlight shows in a way the same seam under a wall cupboard never does. 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. Rectangles nest and rounds do not. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

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. Banquette seating wants a cantilever foot under it. 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. 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. 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. Whoever signs off is agreed before machining starts.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. The wall between the original room and the return usually carries a steel, and the plaster line above it steps, so anything full height behind the run is measured separately from the top. Rounds waste the corners of their blank where squares do not, so the mix of shapes moves the slab count more than the number of covers does. The gangway sets the dimension, not the drawing.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. A long piece has to come through the front door, down the hall, round the newel post and through a doorway with a step down into the addition. The commercial frontage on streets like these is a narrow shop with the dining room running back from the pavement, so the tops go in past furniture that is already down. A high ceiling wants a thicker edge under it.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. A unit in an old parade rarely has rear access, which means every top and every base comes through the front door in the order it will be set out. Long hours push the choice towards a harder face.

The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. 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. A rocking table is a floor problem and not a stone one.