Restaurant and cafe table tops in Strand-on-the-Green

Yes. Strand-on-the-Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. 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. 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. An unload that overruns costs a service, so it does not. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

That rear wall carries the back door and the only window, which leaves very little uninterrupted length for a sink run. The commercial frontage on streets like these is a narrow shop with the dining room running back from the pavement, so the tops go in past furniture that is already down. Old floors fall away and the feet take it up. A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole 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. Radiators and rails cap the depth of a two-seat piece.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. Handling is where a polished edge gets damaged. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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 bay is booked against the fitting date, not the week.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. 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 family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. Orders are counted in pieces and never in metres. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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. Ordered as a set, so the set matches.

The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. 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. What a counter leaves behind is worth designing for. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. 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. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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 short term does not justify a surface that fails early.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Nothing changes hands until after the template. Ceilings are generous and the rooms are narrow, so the runs are long, the aisle is tight and there is nowhere to stand a slab on edge. 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. A dining room is a batch, and a batch is one slab run.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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. Packaging goes back on the van rather than into the yard.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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 unload is timed between service, never through it.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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.