Restaurant and cafe table tops in West Hendon

Yes. West Hendon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW9. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. 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. The van stays until the last piece is on its base. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

A balcony door is the only other opening in the flat and it leads nowhere useful, so everything comes in through the front door. The commercial space in a new block is a ground-floor unit with a service bay or a loading door behind it, and that is the most straightforward delivery a table order gets: a level threshold, a flat floor and a goods lift where the unit runs over more than one level. Roller shutters and bollards lengthen the carry. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. 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 car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. 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. Battens under anything that has to wait. 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. 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 quiet hour is worth more to us than a close bay.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. Repeat work is quoted against the original, not from scratch. 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. Fit-out dates are worked backwards from the opening.

Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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 poseur height changes the base and not the blank. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. 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. A step in the floor is a base decision. Send the fit-out drawing with final table positions and sizes, the base specification, and the delivery window the managing agent is prepared to accept. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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 specification is written so it can be repeated.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Every piece is offered up to its own pedestal.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. The way in is walked before the van doors open.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Plasterboard partitions mean light scribes and clean joins, and the fabrication effort moves to the visible faces instead. What a table top needs from us is a size, a shape and the base plate it has to be drilled to, and very little else. Wine, citrus and a bleach cloth decide the material.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. Rounds waste the corners of their blank where squares do not, so the mix of shapes moves the slab count more than the number of covers does. Squares off one slab and rounds off another, where that is cheaper.