Restaurant and cafe table tops in Malden Rushett

Yes. Malden Rushett is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT9. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Kingston upon Thames. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. 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 shared forecourt is booked rather than chanced. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen occupies the ground floor of the addition with a garden door at the far end, so there is a second way in that is narrower than the front door and a great deal shorter. The trade on streets like these sits in a parade of narrow shopfronts, so the dining room is long and thin and the covers are won by the width of the gangway rather than by the size of the room. Communal lengths belong in the larger units. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. Banquette seating wants a cantilever foot under it.

A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. 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. Battens under anything that has to wait. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Where the van cannot wait, the room has to be ready.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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 count is agreed before the slab is committed. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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. Lead time is the reason the date is set early.

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. 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. Two-seaters and four-seaters come off one slab run. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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 rocking table is a floor problem and not a stone one. 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. 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. The operator chooses and the freeholder rarely has to.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. 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.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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 gangway is a measurement rather than an impression.

The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. The way in is walked before the van doors open.

Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. A breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem.