Restaurant and cafe table tops in West Harrow

Yes. West Harrow is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA1, HA2. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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 suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The classic arrangement is the original back room with a later extension bolted onto it, so the kitchen is two ages of building in one room. 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. What the unit was before decides what it needs now. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. Weight low, spread wide, and it stays put.

A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. 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. Bases go in first and tops go in last. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Pieces are staged inside before the van is moved off.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. The batch reference goes on file with the drawing. 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. Repeat work is quoted against the original, not from scratch.

The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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. A poseur height changes the base and not the blank. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. A step in the floor is a base decision. 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. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. 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. Dilapidations do not reach what was never fixed down.

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. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. 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. 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. Every piece is offered up to its own pedestal.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The chimney breast in the kitchen once took a copper or a back boiler, and whatever is left of it is rarely square to the rest of the room. Table tops sit outside all of that, because a top touches no wall at all and every one of its edges is profiled, polished and on show. Base spread against top size is checked before a size is agreed.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. A side alley and a back door mean most pieces go in whole, and it is the alley width rather than the front door that decides it. The units are wider than an older shopfront, which is what makes a long wall of two-seaters work, and a repeated size is the single cheapest decision on the order because it nests tightly and makes a spare piece worth holding. Frontage, gangway and covers, in that order.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. The chimney breast in the corner has usually been left in place, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends. The units are wider than an older shopfront and take a proper run of two-seaters down one wall, which is where a repeated size earns its keep. Covers decide the count, and the count decides the order.