Restaurant and cafe table tops in Croydon Town Centre

Yes. Croydon Town Centre is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. 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. Delivery is booked to the room, not to a half day. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Kitchens are compact and standardised, which makes the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines a larger share of the total than the stone. 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. Converted houses mean several sizes, not one. 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. A shallow room decides the diameter early.

Blankets on the walls and a board on the floor go in before the first piece, because a scratched car becomes a bill from the managing agent long after the kitchen is finished. 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. Pieces are numbered so none of them is carried twice. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Empty frames go back on the van the same trip.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. What one room learns, the next room uses. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. Turnover between operators rarely changes the pedestals.

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. 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. A long communal piece is a slab-length question. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

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. Sharp corners are eased wherever people pass. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. No payment is due before the template. The balcony door frequently opens off the kitchen, which puts a threshold, a draught and a well-used route through one end of the run. 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. The base plate settles the drilling before the stone is cut.

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. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. 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. A suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning.

Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Entry-phone access, a booked lift and a parking bay near the entrance all have to be arranged before a date is confirmed. The trade in this stock is a row of units under a block, usually a roller shutter with a shallow room behind it. A loading bay is the easiest delivery there is.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Lift doors close on a timer that takes no account of somebody holding a worktop, so a pair of hands stays on the buttons at each end. 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. The last thing carried in is the first one set out.