Restaurant and cafe table tops in Morden Park

Yes. Morden Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM4. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

A soil stack is strapped to the outside of the addition wall and its branch comes through low, which settles where the sink can go before any layout is drawn. 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. Small rooms want small pieces and steady bases. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. The gangway is a measurement rather than an impression.

A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. 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. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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 really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop replacement. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would 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. Lead time is the reason the date is set early. 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. A breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. Fixed seating fixes the dimension it faces. 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. Access is arranged through a managing agent or a scheme office rather than with the household directly, so a date gets confirmed once in writing and moving it costs a fortnight. 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.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. 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. A spare top is the cheapest insurance in the room.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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. Overhang past the plate is where a table tips.

How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. 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. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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. The way in is walked before the van doors open.