Restaurant and cafe table tops in Richmond Hill

Yes. Richmond Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW10. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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. Frames come off before pallets so the floor stays clear. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The closet wing is a narrow projection at the back with windows on two sides, which leaves very little continuous wall for a run. 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. Flats above set the hours the work can happen in. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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.

Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. 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. The frame needs the clearance the piece does. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Loading rules are confirmed with the operator beforehand.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Held stock is worth more than a discount. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. What one room learns, the next room uses.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. 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. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. A managed building wants notice and it gets notice.

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. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. 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. An unload that overruns costs a service, so it does not.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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. Nothing is trimmed on site to make it fit.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Lower ground floor kitchens are reached by a stair with a winder in it, and the head height over that winder is lower than the room at either end. 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. The stone is straightforward and the base fixing is the job.

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. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. 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. A stack of tops is a weight before it is a delivery.