Restaurant and cafe table tops in Cranham

Yes. Cranham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. 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. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. A whole slab still gets reserved, because a dozen matching tops is the entire point of ordering them together. Covers decide the count, and the count decides the order. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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. Levelled at the feet, never packed under the stone.

A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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. Nothing is stacked flat on a dining room floor. 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 van stays until the last piece is on its base.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop replacement. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. 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. Match it now or hunt for it later. 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. A trial piece before a large order is money well spent.

Three runs is three scribes and three separate lifts, so a U takes longer on site than its metreage suggests even on a day when nothing goes wrong. 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. Nothing is cut until the seating plan stops moving. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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. A pedestal is checked for spread before a size is agreed. Bring in one base, or send the maker’s plate drawing, and tell us the table count including any spares you want to hold back. 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. The length of the lease is a legitimate reason to specify differently, and nobody should be talked into a decade of surface for five years of trading. A brand standard is followed to the letter or not at all.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. Nothing changes hands until after the template. Units are often only 500mm deep, so a standard 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors need checking against it. 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. One piece per table, with no join in it anywhere.

Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. A column in the room is designed around, not cut around.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. A quiet hour is worth more to us than a close bay.

Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. A fit-out programme runs to an opening date that does not move, so the sizes are frozen and the slab committed earlier than most jobs need. Orders are counted in pieces and never in metres.