Restaurant and cafe table tops in Strand

Yes. Strand is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are WC2R, WC2N. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The original larder or store cupboard usually survives in a corner, and that alcove is deeper than the units and squarer than the walls around it. 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. A goods lift takes a frame and saves a morning. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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. The base carries the weight and the floor carries the base.

Standing a three-metre length on end takes more headroom outside the car than inside it, and a low lobby ceiling is what actually stops 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. Polished faces never travel touching each other. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop templating. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. 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. 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 catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. 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. What a counter leaves behind is worth designing for. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over 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. A shallow room decides the diameter early. 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 householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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 lease term is a fair reason to specify differently.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Lath and plaster, a settled floor and a hall with a turn in it are the three things that decide how this job runs. 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.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. 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. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short.

Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. 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. 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. A second room is easier to match if it is mentioned now.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. The frame needs the clearance the piece does.