Restaurant and cafe table tops in Latchmere

Yes. Latchmere is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW11. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. A bay suspension carries a fee and a notice period, and the notice period is the part that catches people out when a date moves. 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. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

There is no back addition on these, so the kitchen is the original rear room and the run is one wall long with a door at each end of it. 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. Communal lengths belong in the larger units. 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. 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. Nothing is scribed, because nothing meets a wall.

A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. 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. The van stays until the last piece is on its base.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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 count is agreed before the slab is committed.

Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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. The count per slab is worked before a figure is given. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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. Levelled at the feet, never packed under the stone. 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. A leaseholder paying for their own kitchen inside managed stock still needs the freeholder to consent, and that consent is about the building and the common parts rather than about the worktop. 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 lease term is a fair reason to specify differently.

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. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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 pedestal is checked for spread before a size is agreed.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. 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 column in the room is designed around, not cut around.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. 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. A long communal piece is a slab-length question.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. A fit-out programme runs to an opening date that does not move, so the sizes are frozen and the slab committed earlier than most jobs need. Lead time is the reason the date is set early.