Restaurant and cafe table tops in Forest Hill

Yes. Forest Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE23. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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. The pavement stays walkable while the frames come off. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Ceilings are high enough that an extractor over the island has a long drop, and its position is fixed before the island top is templated. Hospitality in an area like this is usually a converted house or an old inn, so the dining space is several small rooms rather than one, and each room takes a different table size. Converted houses mean several sizes, not one. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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.

A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. 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. Nothing is carried past a chair still in the gangway. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. One stop, and the count is proved before we leave.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. 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. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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 converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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 stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. 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. Cut from the same run as the counter, so the room agrees. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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. Banquette seating wants a cantilever foot under it. Send a plan of each room with its table sizes against it, and say which covers are outdoors so the material can be split before anything is priced. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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. Written approval before cutting, every time.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. 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. A circle wastes its corners, and the quote says so.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. A large villa has wide doors, a generous hall and somewhere to park, so the joins that go in are chosen for layout rather than forced by the route. That is fine, but it has to be drawn: a room of one-offs prices differently from a room of repeats, and the difference is real rather than a markup. A loading bay is the easiest delivery there is.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. These kitchens are big rooms with long perimeter runs and an island, so level has to hold across the whole floor rather than along one wall. A garden or a terrace comes with most of these, and the outdoor covers are a different specification from the ones standing indoors. The room is handed back laid up, whatever the building.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. Where a servery run forces a join, the tables never carry one, because a table top is a single piece of stone or it is not a table top. Rectangles nest and rounds do not.