Restaurant and cafe table tops in Aldborough Hatch

Yes. Aldborough Hatch is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG2. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. 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. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Walls look modern and are not: block or breeze with a skim that has been patched over decades, so dry-laying and scribing still apply. Trade in this stock is a single shopfront with a small room behind it, so an order is a dozen pieces rather than fifty, and that changes what is worth doing rather than how it is done. Terraces and gardens live outdoors all year. 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. 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.

Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. Packaging goes back on the van rather than into the yard. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. 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. The van stays until the last piece is on its base.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. A breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should.

With three walls in play the chance of one of them being out of square is high, and the template has to carry all three angles. 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 count per slab is worked before a figure is given. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

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. 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. Bring in one base, or send the maker’s plate drawing, and tell us the table count including any spares you want to hold back. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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. Whoever signs off is agreed before machining starts.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. No money is taken before the template happens. A boiler hangs on the wall above the run in most of these, and its pipework drops exactly where a splashback wants to go. 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. A true circle comes off a machine and never off a hand.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. A quiet hour is worth more to us than a close bay.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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. Pieces are numbered so none of them is carried twice.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. The advantage of a U is that every join can be put over a gable in a corner, so nothing lands in the middle of a clear 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. A long communal piece is a slab-length question.