Restaurant and cafe table tops in Bell Green

Yes. Bell Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE26, SE6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The classic arrangement is the original back room with a later extension bolted onto it, so the kitchen is two ages of building in one room. Parades of this period usually keep a service road or a yard behind them, so a full order can arrive at the back and the dining room stays laid up while it does. Frontage, gangway and covers, in that order. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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 step in the floor is a base decision.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. The last thing carried in is the first one set out. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. 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. 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. The programme decides the delivery, not the workshop. 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. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. 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. Veining is laid out so no two pieces read as a pair. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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. Every piece is offered up to its own pedestal. 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. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. 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.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. A side alley and a back door mean most pieces go in whole, and it is the alley width rather than the front door that decides it. 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. Covers decide the count, and the count decides the order.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. Rounds waste the corners of their blank where squares do not, so the mix of shapes moves the slab count more than the number of covers does. A spare comes off the same run or it is not a spare.

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. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. 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 blank decides the diameter, not the other way round.

Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. 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 drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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.