Restaurant and cafe table tops in Rayners Lane

Yes. Rayners Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA2, HA5. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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 long push from the kerb is planned, not discovered. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Balcony access and long communal corridors are often the carry route, and both are narrower than they look with a piece on edge. A high street of this kind has flats over the trade, and both of those facts set the shape of the day. Chair backs do more damage than plates ever do. 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. Radiators and rails cap the depth of a two-seat piece.

Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. 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. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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. Frames come off before pallets so the floor stays clear.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. 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. What one room learns, the next room uses. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. 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. Turnover between operators rarely changes the pedestals.

A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. 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. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

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. 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. An awkward corner takes a made shape. Confirm the permitted loading times and any residents’ hours with the managing agent, and settle the edge profile and the thickness before the slab is cut. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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. What moves out with you is worth choosing well.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. 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. Feet are wound out where the floor falls away.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. There is usually a rounded internal corner where the plan turns, and stone does not follow a curve without being cut to it. Loading is restricted, often to a short window in the morning, so the order arrives complete and gets counted inside rather than on the pavement. Old floors fall away and the feet take it up.

The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Larger diameters go in early, while the floor is still clear.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. 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.