Restaurant and cafe table tops in Maida Vale

Yes. Maida Vale 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. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These kitchens are full of boxed soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing usually stops short of the ceiling. 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. Pavement covers take their own specification. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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.

Blankets on the walls and a board on the floor go in before the first piece, because a scratched car becomes a bill from the managing agent long after the kitchen is finished. 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. Wrapping stays on until the pedestal is standing. 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. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. 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 replacement, worktop templating 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. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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 managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. 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. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it.

It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. 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. A set is laid out together before anything is wrapped. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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. Banquette seating wants a cantilever foot under it. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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. The operator chooses and the freeholder rarely has to.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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 rocking table is a floor problem and not a stone one.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Lift doors close on a timer that takes no account of somebody holding a worktop, so a pair of hands stays on the buttons at each end. 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.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Permitted works hours are commonly weekdays with a late start and an early finish, so a one-day fit is planned around the porter and the lift. The trade on a street of this sort sits at ground floor with flats above it, so deliveries run to a window and the window is short. What the parade allows is what the room can seat.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. These kitchens were service rooms once, so they are long, narrow and further from the entrance than the floor plan suggests. 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. A dining room is a batch, and a batch is one slab run.