Restaurant and cafe table tops in Underhill

Yes. Underhill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN5. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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 consumer unit and the meter tails often sit in a cupboard in the corner of the kitchen, and that cupboard has to stay reachable whatever goes in around it. 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. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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 thin top over a wide plate wants a pad underneath.

The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. 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 stack of tops is a weight before it is a delivery. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. 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. 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 installation and worktop templating. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. 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 count per slab is worked before a figure is given. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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. Uneven flags outside are why outdoor feet adjust. 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. Where the provider has set the specification the material choice was made once for a great many kitchens, and the useful work is meeting it exactly rather than proposing something else on the day. 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. The invoice and the approval carry the same name.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. The clearance under a fixed shelf is measured, not assumed.

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. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. 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 long communal piece is a slab-length question.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. 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. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Battens under anything that has to wait.

Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. The bases are the heavy pallet, not the tops.