Restaurant and cafe table tops in Tooting Bec

Yes. Tooting Bec is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW17. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. A shared-use bay allows a paid stay up to a set maximum, and that maximum is routinely shorter than the working day the job needs. 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. A shared forecourt is booked rather than chanced. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The rear extension is frequently original rather than added, which means it is solidly built and just as far out of square as the rest of the house. 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. What the unit was before decides what it needs now. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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.

An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. 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 dozen pieces is a dozen carries, not one lift. Camera enforcement gives nobody the chance to explain, where an officer on foot at least sees a tail lift down and stone coming off it. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Where the van cannot wait, the room has to be ready.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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 junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Spares are cheap while the run is still on the ground.

Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. 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 blank decides the diameter, not the other way round. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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. 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. Nothing is ordered against a verbal instruction.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit 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. Mixed sizes are fine; unplanned mixed sizes are not.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. A step up off the pavement means the piece is lifted to the threshold before it is carried anywhere, and that first lift is the one that wants four hands. 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. Bases go in first and tops go in last.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. 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. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Wider halls make the carry noticeably easier, and that alone can remove a join that a narrower terrace would have forced into the run. That measurement comes first: once the gangway is fixed the table dimension follows, and on most of these frontages that means a six hundred millimetre square for two and a seven hundred millimetre round where the room widens towards the back. Frontage, gangway and covers, in that order.