Restaurant and cafe table tops in Addiscombe

Yes. Addiscombe is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Visitor permits are issued to the household rather than to the trade, so the ones the day needs come from the customer and are best in hand the week before. 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 plan on the van matches the plan on the floor. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The boiler has usually been moved out of the main house into the addition, and its flue, its pipework and its condensate all cross the wall the run wants. The trade on streets like these sits in a parade of narrow shopfronts, so the dining room is long and thin and the covers are won by the width of the gangway rather than by the size of the room. Chair backs do more damage than plates ever do. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. 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 narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. 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. Wrapping stays on until the pedestal is standing. A bay suspension carries a fee and a notice period, and the notice period is the part that catches people out when a date moves. 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 long push from the kerb is planned, not discovered.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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 breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should.

The wall between the original room and the return usually carries a steel, and the plaster line above it steps, so anything full height behind the run is measured separately from the top. 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. Mixed sizes are fine; unplanned mixed sizes are not. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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. Send the seating plan with the gangway widths marked, and bring in one of the bases or the maker’s drawing so the bolt centres can be measured properly. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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. Ownership of the pedestals is worth establishing early.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. 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. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A single long run down one side puts every cut-out in one piece, so the sink, the hob and any drainer grooves all take material out of the same length. 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. What a counter leaves behind is worth designing for.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. The measurement that governs everything here is the gangway, because it caps the diameter before anybody has chosen a colour. Nothing is trimmed on site to make it fit.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A galley run down a side-return extension usually measures longer than a slab will give in one length, so a join is designed in from the start rather than discovered. Where a servery run forces a join, the tables never carry one, because a table top is a single piece of stone or it is not a table top. The largest blank is nested first and the rest around it.