Restaurant and cafe table tops in Wood Lane

Yes. Wood Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W12. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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. Somewhere to stand the frames matters more than the distance. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

A gated development controls when a van gets in, where it can stand and for how long, and none of that gets decided on the morning. 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. A shopfront door is the only way in on most parades. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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 step in the floor is a base decision.

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. 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. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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 clock on the kerb changes the order of unloading.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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. Held stock is worth more than a discount. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. 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. What one room learns, the next room uses.

A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. 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. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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. 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. Every piece is offered up to its own pedestal. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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. Bolted to your own bases, so they leave when you do.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. 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. Tops travel upright in a frame, faces apart.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. Nothing is trimmed on site to make it fit.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Everything arrives through one controlled entrance with a booking sheet, and a delivery that misses its slot waits. 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. Wine, citrus and a bleach cloth decide the material.

How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. A fit-out programme runs to an opening date that does not move, so the sizes are frozen and the slab committed earlier than most jobs need. Turnover between operators rarely changes the pedestals.