Restaurant and cafe table tops in Maida Hill

Yes. Maida Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W9. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. 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 van stays until the last piece is on its base. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The original larder or store cupboard usually survives in a corner, and that alcove is deeper than the units and squarer than the walls around 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. 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. 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.

A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. Tops travel upright in a padded frame, and it is the frame rather than the person carrying it that has to clear the tightest turn. Wrapping stays on until the pedestal is standing. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. 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 quiet hour is worth more to us than a close bay.

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. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. 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. The programme decides the delivery, not the workshop. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it.

The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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 long communal piece is a slab-length question. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The length of the lease is a legitimate reason to specify differently, and nobody should be talked into a decade of surface for five years of trading. The operator chooses and the freeholder rarely has to.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Suspended timber floors flex underfoot, and anything that moves beneath a unit shows up later as a lipped join. 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. The seating plan sets the sizes before the slab does.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. 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. 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. Nothing is left on a pavement while a space is found.

A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Two hands to a piece, however light it looks.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. 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. A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. 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. Shapes are drawn rather than described.