Restaurant and cafe table tops in Yeading

Yes. Yeading is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. The pavement stays walkable while the frames come off. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A minority of these are non-traditional precast types, and in those the inside face of the outer wall is a panel between columns rather than a masonry wall. The trade in this stock is a row of units under a block: a roller shutter, a shallow room behind it and a paved forecourt in front with bollards across the approach. A goods lift takes a frame and saves a morning. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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. Every piece is offered up to its own pedestal.

Every flight adds a set of handling movements, and handling is where stone gets damaged, so a fourth-floor walk-up is priced by the flight rather than by the metre. 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. Handling is where a polished edge gets damaged. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. One stop, and the count is proved before we leave.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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.

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. 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. Shapes are drawn rather than described. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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. Nothing is trimmed on site to make it fit. Tell us how close a van can get to the door, and whether the tables have to be moved regularly, since that decides the thickness before anything else does. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. 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. Consistency across sites is a decision, not an accident.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. 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. What the room does to the base matters more than the wall.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Windows and doors were replaced across whole streets on one programme, so the kitchen window is a plastic frame in the old opening with a deep lined reveal. That forecourt is the carry, and it is longer than it looks, so the pieces travel the last stretch on a trolley in a frame rather than being walked in by hand. Chair backs do more damage than plates ever do.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The window cill clears a worktop by very little, which settles how tall the upstand under it can be before anyone has drawn a thing. The trade in this stock is a row of units under a block, usually a roller shutter with a shallow room behind it. Old floors fall away and the feet take it up.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. A thin top over a wide plate wants a pad underneath.