Restaurant and cafe table tops in Aldersbrook

Yes. Aldersbrook is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E12. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. Where the permit is a digital session rather than a paper one, somebody in the house has to start it at the hour the van actually arrives. 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. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

These were built late enough to have a damp course and proper footings, so the front of the house is close to true and the rear addition holding the kitchen is the part that has dropped. That measurement comes first: once the gangway is fixed the table dimension follows, and on most of these frontages that means a six hundred millimetre square for two and a seven hundred millimetre round where the room widens towards the back. Frontage, gangway and covers, in that order. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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 shallow room decides the diameter early.

Turning a heavy piece on edge indoors needs floor space at both ends of the turn, so the hall is cleared of furniture before anything comes off the van. 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. Wrapping stays on until the pedestal is standing. A resident bay and a shared-use bay can sit on the same street under different rules, and it is usually the shared one a visitor permit or a ticket touches. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. 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 seating plan is priced as a list of pieces. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. Sharp corners are eased wherever people pass. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.

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. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Two people will walk a two-metre piece in through a front door; the same hall with a three-metre piece wants four, purely because nobody can let go halfway. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Two hands to a piece, however light it looks.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. A shared-use bay allows a paid stay up to a set maximum, and that maximum is routinely shorter than the working day the job needs. 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. Frames come off before pallets so the floor stays clear.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. 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. Sizes settle the yield before the shape does.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. 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. 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. Weight low, spread wide, and it stays put.