Restaurant and cafe table tops in Seven Sisters

Yes. Seven Sisters is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N15. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. The unload is timed between service, never through it. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

These flats have been reconfigured more than once, so the kitchen often sits in what was a bedroom with services run a long way to reach it. Trade in this stock is a single shopfront with a small room behind it, so an order is a dozen pieces rather than fifty, and that changes what is worth doing rather than how it is done. Converted houses mean several sizes, not one. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. An awkward corner takes a made shape.

A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of 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. The frame needs the clearance the piece does. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. 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 whole order comes off in one movement wherever it can.

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 splashbacks & upstands. 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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. A phased opening is planned as a single order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. The count is agreed before the slab is committed.

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. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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. Feet are wound out where the floor falls away. Bring in one base, or send the maker’s plate drawing, and tell us the table count including any spares you want to hold back. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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. Decisions made remotely still need a physical sample.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. 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. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. The base carries the weight and the floor carries the base.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. A stub wall divides the kitchen from the back lobby, and it rarely stayed where the original drawing put it. 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. No wall behind it, so nothing about it is hidden.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. The front rooms sit over the shop window with a structural beam beneath them, and the floor either side of that beam is not at one level. Trade in this stock is a single shopfront with a small room behind, so an order is a dozen pieces rather than fifty. A loading bay is the easiest delivery there is.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Rear access over a flat roof or up an external stair exists in some of these, and it is worth checking before the front stair is assumed. A rear alley behind the parade helps where it is clear, but a small top comes through the front easily enough where it is not. The room is handed back laid up, whatever the building.