Restaurant and cafe table tops in Dulwich Village

Yes. Dulwich Village is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE21. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. 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. 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. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen is at the front or the back depending on the plan, and which it is decides whether there is a rear door on the route at all. Trade in this stock is a single shopfront with a small room behind it, so an order is a dozen pieces rather than fifty, and that changes what is worth doing rather than how it is done. A narrow frontage is a small diameter, honestly stated. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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 pedestal is checked for spread before a size is agreed.

Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. 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. A lift takes a loaded frame or it takes nothing. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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 van stays until the last piece is on its base.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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. 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. Ordered as a set, so the set matches. 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. Where an operator changes hands the bases usually stay, so a refit becomes a resurface and the saving comes from what is already bolted down. A second room is easier to match if it is mentioned now.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. 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 circle wastes its corners, and the quote says so. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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 column in the room is designed around, not cut around. 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. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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. An incoming operator inherits the pedestals, not the choice.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. 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. Handling is where a polished edge gets damaged.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. 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. Rectangles nest and rounds do not.

There is nothing to pay before the template visit. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Floors have usually settled towards the rear, so levelling means packing the units before the stone beds down. 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 underside matters, because a hand goes under every edge.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. These were built on a solid ground floor slab, so nothing bounces and nothing can be packed down, only up. Trade in this stock is a single shopfront with a small room behind, so an order is a dozen pieces rather than fifty. Pavement covers take their own specification.