Restaurant and cafe table tops in Tolworth

Yes. Tolworth is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT6. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Kingston upon Thames. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. 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. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Ceiling heights dropped after the war, so there is less wall between the worktop and the wall units than in anything older. 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. Communal lengths belong in the larger units. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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. A shallow room decides the diameter early.

A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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 stack of tops is a weight before it is a delivery. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. 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 breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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. The largest blank is nested first and the rest around it. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

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. 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. Sharp corners are eased wherever people pass. 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. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. 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. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Weight low, spread wide, and it stays put.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. 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 lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. 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. Battens under anything that has to wait.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. The measurement that governs everything here is the gangway, because it caps the diameter before anybody has chosen a colour. A step in the floor is a base decision.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. 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. A poseur height changes the base and not the blank.