Restaurant and cafe table tops in Barnehurst

Yes. Barnehurst is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA7. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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 unload is timed between service, never through it. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The rear wall now carries french or folding doors across most of its width, so a whole side of the room opens and a long piece comes straight in off the garden. The units are wider than an older shopfront, which is what makes a long wall of two-seaters work, and a repeated size is the single cheapest decision on the order because it nests tightly and makes a spare piece worth holding. Roller shutters and bollards lengthen the carry. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. The clearance under a fixed shelf is measured, not assumed.

Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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. Nothing is stacked flat on a dining room floor. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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 whole order comes off in one movement wherever it can.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop design & quotation. 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. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should. 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. The programme decides the delivery, not the workshop.

Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. 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. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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. Room by room, since no two of them are the same. Confirm how many covers go outside, and tell us whether the outdoor bases share the pattern of the indoor ones, since they often do not. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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. A licence to alter is not needed for something unfixed.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. 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 wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Nothing is scribed, because nothing meets a wall.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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 bases are the heavy pallet, not the tops.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. 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 poseur height changes the base and not the blank.

Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. The turn is measured for the frame, not for a person.