Restaurant and cafe table tops in Pimlico

Yes. Pimlico is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW1V. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. Camera enforcement gives nobody the chance to explain, where an officer on foot at least sees a tail lift down and stone coming off it. 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. Empty frames go back on the van the same trip. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Floors are the original joists with a later acoustic layer laid over them, and that layer is not flat where it meets the doorways. 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. Old floors fall away and the feet take it up. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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. Overhang past the plate is where a table tips.

Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying 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. Nothing is carried past a chair still in the gangway. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. A suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. One set of decisions, repeated across the whole room. 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. 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. Buying twice costs more than buying deep once.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. 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. Veining is laid out so no two pieces read as a pair. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

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. 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. Radiators and rails cap the depth of a two-seat piece. 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. Planned programmes run several kitchens in sequence, so template, fabrication and fitting move as a rolling operation and one uncollected key holds up more than one flat. 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. Specified for the term, not for a decade by default.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. An awkward corner takes a made shape.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The communal stair is wide and handsome and the flat door at the top of it is a standard leaf, which is where a long piece stops. The commercial frontage on streets like these is a narrow shop with the dining room running back from the pavement, so the tops go in past furniture that is already down. What the unit was before decides what it needs now.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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. A spare comes off the same run or it is not a spare.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. A communal flight is out of use while a piece is on it, so the carry is timed so nobody is trying to pass on a half-landing. 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. Polished faces never travel touching each other.