Restaurant and cafe table tops in Ladbroke Grove

Yes. Ladbroke Grove is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W10, W11. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. 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. Frames come off before pallets so the floor stays clear. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Where the kitchen has taken the bay, the end of the room is three facets of glass set at angles and there is no straight wall left to finish against. That measurement comes first: once the gangway is fixed the table dimension follows, and on most of these frontages that means a six hundred millimetre square for two and a seven hundred millimetre round where the room widens towards the back. Converted houses mean several sizes, not one. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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. An awkward corner takes a made shape.

Carrying down a flight is not the easier direction, because the weight runs ahead of the crew and whoever is at the bottom has no way of stopping a slip. 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. Corners take the knocks, so corners get the padding. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. Loading rules are confirmed with the operator beforehand.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. Spares are cheap while the run is still on the ground. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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 batch reference goes on file with the drawing.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. 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. The seating plan is priced as a list of pieces. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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. Feet are wound out where the floor falls away. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. 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.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The kitchen normally sits in the back addition or a later side return, which puts the run against the oldest and least straight wall in the building. 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. Corners eased, since chair backs find them first.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. The base carries the weight and the floor carries the base.

Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. 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. Sizes settle the yield before the shape does.

How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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. Repeat work is quoted against the original, not from scratch.