Restaurant and cafe table tops in Northfields

Yes. Northfields is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W13, W5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. 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. Nothing is left on a pavement while a space is found. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. 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. A basement is for prep and not for storing stone. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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. Fixed seating fixes the dimension it faces.

Where the turn inside is tight the piece gets turned on the path and brought in already on edge, which needs room in front of the door as well as behind it. 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. A lift takes a loaded frame or it takes nothing. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Delivery is booked to the room, not to a half day.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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 programme decides the delivery, not the workshop.

A join in a long run wants to sit away from the rooflight, because a seam under direct downlight shows in a way the same seam under a wall cupboard never does. 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. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. 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. The length of the lease is a legitimate reason to specify differently, and nobody should be talked into a decade of surface for five years of trading. The drawing goes to whoever has to approve it.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. 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. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. 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. Made to the plate you own, so nothing else has to be replaced.

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. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Handling is where a polished edge gets damaged.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. 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. Empty frames go back on the van the same trip.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. 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 cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. The wall between the original room and the return usually carries a steel, and the plaster line above it steps, so anything full height behind the run is measured separately from the top. 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.