Restaurant and cafe table tops in Richmond

Yes. Richmond is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW9, TW10. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of the borough. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. 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 suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Original shutter boxes survive in the reveals of the front rooms and stand proud of the plaster, and that is the line a run under the window has to be scribed to. 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. What the unit was before decides what it needs now. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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. Weight low, spread wide, and it stays put.

Blankets on the walls and a board on the floor go in before the first piece, because a scratched car becomes a bill from the managing agent long after the kitchen is finished. 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 trolley run across a forecourt gets boarded like any other. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Pieces are staged inside before the van is moved off.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. 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. Turnover between operators rarely changes the pedestals. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. 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. Match it now or hunt for it later.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. 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. Veining is laid out so no two pieces read as a pair. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. A step in the floor is a base decision. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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. A managed building wants notice and it gets notice.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Rounds waste the corners of their blank where squares do not, so the mix of shapes moves the slab count more than the number of covers does. A spare comes off the same run or it is not a spare.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Lift doors close on a timer that takes no account of somebody holding a worktop, so a pair of hands stays on the buttons at each end. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Each piece is checked off against the plan as it lands.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. 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. Where the permit is a digital session rather than a paper one, somebody in the house has to start it at the hour the van actually arrives. 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. The pavement stays walkable while the frames come off.

A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A car will often hold more than its doors will admit, and it is the clear width between the door edges that a piece actually has to pass through. What gets damaged on a route like that is a corner, and a table corner is polished, exposed and at precisely the height of a door frame. Nothing is carried past a chair still in the gangway.