Restaurant and cafe table tops in Nine Elms

Yes. Nine Elms is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW8, SW11. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Poured screed over steel decking can fall away across a long run, so level is checked across the whole room before anything is packed. The delivery is straightforward by comparison, since a goods lift and a loading door will take a full frame and a whole floor can be staged in one movement. Small rooms want small pieces and steady bases. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. 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 step in the floor is a base decision.

The lift is only part of the route, and the corridor from the lobby to the flat door often holds a tighter turn than the car does. 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. Corners take the knocks, so corners get the padding. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. 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.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. The bases usually stay and only the pieces change. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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. A refit is a resurface where the pedestals are sound.

Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. 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. The count per slab is worked before a figure is given. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. 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. Every piece is offered up to its own pedestal. Give us the communal table length and the base positions along it, and confirm the goods lift dimensions so the frames can be sized to the car. Inventories record the condition of a kitchen at both ends of a tenancy, which is a practical argument for a surface that looks the same in its fifth year as its first. 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. Ten years of service is a different specification entirely.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Ceilings are high and every surface is hard, so cutting on site carries further here than in any other kind of building. 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. Cut to your bases rather than to a size off a list.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. 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. Loading rules are confirmed with the operator beforehand.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Pieces come off the van in the order the room fills.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The original openings were sized for goods, but the residential doors dropped into them were not. What a table top needs from us is a size, a shape and the base plate it has to be drilled to, and very little else. A dining room is a batch, and a batch is one slab run.