Restaurant and cafe table tops in Clayhall

Yes. Clayhall is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG5. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. 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. Somewhere to stand the frames matters more than the distance. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to 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. 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. Converted houses mean several sizes, not one. 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 thin top over a wide plate wants a pad underneath.

Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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. Two hands to a piece, however light it looks. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. 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 clock on the kerb changes the order of unloading.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Match it now or hunt for it later. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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 trial piece before a large order is money well spent.

Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. 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. Every dimension quoted is a finished dimension. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

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. Uneven flags outside are why outdoor feet adjust. 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. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. 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.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. 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. Corners take the knocks, so corners get the padding.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Suspended floors at the front meet a solid slab in the extension somewhere in the middle, and the units sit across the change. 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 bases stay yours and only the surface changes.

Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. 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. The seating plan is priced as a list of pieces.