Restaurant and cafe table tops in Totteridge

Yes. Totteridge is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N20. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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.

A period cottage has low ceilings, thick rubble-filled walls and a floor that has never been level, and the worktop is the thing that has to look straight. 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. Old floors fall away and the feet take it up. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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 clearance under a fixed shelf is measured, not assumed.

Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. 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 cellar stair is not a route for stone. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. 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 design & quotation, worktop fabrication 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 kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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 second room is easier to match if it is mentioned now. 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. 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. Spares are cheap while the run is still on the ground.

Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket 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. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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. Room by room, since no two of them are the same. 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. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. The length of the lease is a legitimate reason to specify differently, and nobody should be talked into a decade of surface for five years of trading. Whoever signs off is agreed before machining starts.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Nothing is scribed, because nothing meets a wall.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Doorways are low and narrow, which is a genuine constraint on piece length before anything else is considered. 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 unit was before decides what it needs now.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Lime plaster over rubble moves in and out enough that a single long panel will show a gap somewhere along its length. Deliveries come off a drive or a wide verge, so a whole order can be staged outside and taken in a room at a time. Frontage, gangway and covers, in that order.

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. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. 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.