Restaurant and cafe table tops in Temple Fortune

Yes. Temple Fortune is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW11. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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 unload is timed between service, never through it. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The extension is commonly a flat-roofed addition of the seventies or eighties with a shallower floor build-up, so the two halves of the room do not sit at one level. Parades of this period usually keep a service road or a yard behind them, so a full order can arrive at the back and the dining room stays laid up while it does. A goods lift takes a frame and saves a morning. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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.

Sintered stone at 12mm changes what a staircase can take, because the same run arrives at roughly half the weight of the granite equivalent. 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 way in is walked before the van doors open. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. A whole order comes off in one movement wherever it can.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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. Ordered as a set, so the set matches. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. A second room is easier to match if it is mentioned now.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. 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. Sizes settle the yield before the shape does. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. Feet are wound out where the floor falls away. Confirm how many covers go outside, and tell us whether the outdoor bases share the pattern of the indoor ones, since they often do not. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. 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. Whoever signs off is agreed before machining starts.

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. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. A fit-out programme runs to an opening date that does not move, so the sizes are frozen and the slab committed earlier than most jobs need. Spares are cheap while the run is still on the ground.

Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Internal walls are hollow clay block or stud rather than solid brick, so two points a metre apart on the same wall want two different fixings. 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. Chosen for service, not for the photographs on opening night.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. 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. 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. One repeated size cuts better than six one-offs.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. 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. 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. Larger diameters go in early, while the floor is still clear.