Restaurant and cafe table tops in Knightsbridge

Yes. Knightsbridge is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW1X. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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 long push from the kerb is planned, not discovered. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Walls are solid brick with lime plaster and a hard skim over the top, and that skim comes away in sheets when old tiles are taken back. A high street of this kind has flats over the trade, and both of those facts set the shape of the day. Frontage, gangway and covers, in that order. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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. Nothing is scribed, because nothing meets a wall.

Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. 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. The turn is measured for the frame, not for a person. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. 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. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. 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.

Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. 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. Offcuts from a counter become the smaller pieces. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. 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. Levelled at the feet, never packed under the stone. 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. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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. A licence to alter is not needed for something unfixed.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. 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. A set is laid out together before anything is wrapped.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. 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. Two-seaters and four-seaters come off one slab run.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Thick external walls, deep window reveals and boxed risers mean the runs are templated to what is there rather than to a rectangle. 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. Four finished edges and a set of blind holes, and that is the piece.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Sash windows sit in deep reveals with a working box behind the lining, so a run dying into one has to clear more than the plaster. Loading is restricted, often to a short window in the morning, so the order arrives complete and gets counted inside rather than on the pavement. Covers decide the count, and the count decides the order.