Restaurant and cafe table tops in Tottenham Green

Yes. Tottenham Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N15, N17. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. 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. 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 clock on the kerb changes the order of unloading. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A range sitting in a chimney recess is common, and the flanking pieces are cut with the manufacturer clearance built into the template. Hospitality in an area like this is usually a converted house or an old inn, so the dining space is several small rooms rather than one, and each room takes a different table size. Pavement covers take their own specification. 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. 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. Sharp corners are eased wherever people pass.

Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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 last thing carried in is the first one set out. 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. 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. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. 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. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. 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. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

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. 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. Weight low, spread wide, and it stays put. Send a plan of each room with its table sizes against it, and say which covers are outdoors so the material can be split before anything is priced. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. 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 barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. 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. A cellar stair is not a route for stone.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. The van stays until the last piece is on its base.

The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The kitchen is generally a rear extension or a knocked-through pair of rooms, so part of the perimeter is old wall and part of it is new. Hospitality in an area like this is often a converted house, so the dining space is several small rooms rather than one and the sizes vary room by room. What the parade allows is what the room can seat.

Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through 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. A step in the floor is a base decision.