Restaurant and cafe table tops in Belvedere

Yes. Belvedere is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA17. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. 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. A whole order comes off in one movement wherever it can. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Rear access through a garden or a shared path means long pieces can usually come in whole from the back. The trade in this stock is a row of units under a block: a roller shutter, a shallow room behind it and a paved forecourt in front with bollards across the approach. Old floors fall away and the feet take it up. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass 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. Feet are wound out where the floor falls away.

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. 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 turn is measured for the frame, not for a person. 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. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. The bases are the heavy pallet, not the tops.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. 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. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. 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 bases usually stay and only the pieces change. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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 refit is a resurface where the pedestals are sound.

Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. 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. Sizes settle the yield before the shape does. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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 base carries the weight and the floor carries the base. Tell us how close a van can get to the door, and whether the tables have to be moved regularly, since that decides the thickness before anything else does. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. 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. The invoice and the approval carry the same name.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The ceiling is a concrete soffit with a skim on it, so there is nothing to fix into overhead and no void to hide anything in. Table tops sit outside all of that, because a top touches no wall at all and every one of its edges is profiled, polished and on show. No wall behind it, so nothing about it is hidden.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. A shallow room decides the diameter early.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. 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. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. Somewhere to stand the frames matters more than the distance.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Where the kitchen has been opened into the living room the opening was trimmed with a steel, and a stub of the old wall was left standing at one end. 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. The base plate settles the drilling before the stone is cut.