Restaurant and cafe table tops in New Southgate

Yes. New Southgate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N11. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. 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 plan on the van matches the plan on the floor. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

A two-up two-down has a kitchen that was never designed to be one, so the run is short, the ceiling is low and every millimetre of depth gets argued over. 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. Roller shutters and bollards lengthen the carry. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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.

The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. 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. Corners take the knocks, so corners get the padding. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. 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. A long push from the kerb is planned, not discovered.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. 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. A phased opening is planned as a single order. A specification repeated across several plots has to be repeatable, which quietly rules out the natural stones where no two slabs match. 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.

A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. 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. Nothing is cut until the seating plan stops moving. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. 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.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. 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. Colour is matched across the room, not table by table.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Replacing one plot years after handover is the problem nobody plans for, because a quartz colour can be reordered and a granite block cannot. 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.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. 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. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Overhang past the plate is where a table tips.

Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. 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.