Restaurant and cafe table tops in Roehampton

Yes. Roehampton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW15. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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. The bases are the heavy pallet, not the tops. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The rear door has a concrete step and a small canopy over it, and that step is the whole of the difference between the kitchen floor and the garden path. The trade in this stock is a row of units under a block: a roller shutter, a shallow room behind it and a paved forecourt in front with bollards across the approach. Small rooms want small pieces and steady bases. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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.

Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. 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 trolley run across a forecourt gets boarded like any other. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Somewhere to stand the frames matters more than the distance.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. 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. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. 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. Match it now or hunt for it later.

A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. 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. Squares off one slab and rounds off another, where that is cheaper. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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. Radiators and rails cap the depth of a two-seat piece. Tell us how close a van can get to the door, and whether the tables have to be moved regularly, since that decides the thickness before anything else does. 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. A brand standard is followed to the letter or not at all.

Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. A clock on the kerb changes the order of unloading.

Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. 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.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. 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.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. 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. Every dimension quoted is a finished dimension.