Restaurant and cafe table tops in Gipsy Hill

Yes. Gipsy Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE19, SE27. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. 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. 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. One stop, and the count is proved before we leave. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A service duct runs between the kitchen and the bathroom stacked above it, and access to that duct stays open whatever the layout does. That forecourt is the carry, and it is longer than it looks, so the pieces travel the last stretch on a trolley in a frame rather than being walked in by hand. A rear yard is worth an hour of the day. 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. 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 rocking table is a floor problem and not a stone one.

The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. 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. Polished faces never travel touching each other. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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 shared forecourt is booked rather than chanced.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop replacement 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. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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. Match it now or hunt for it later. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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 trial piece before a large order is money well spent.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. 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. The largest blank is nested first and the rest around it. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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. The gangway is a measurement rather than an impression. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. 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 specification is written so it can be repeated.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. No payment is due before the template. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Walls and ceilings carry decades of thick emulsion over artex, and neither surface tells you where the true line is. 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. Nothing is drilled in your dining room.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. A fob on the communal door and a shared lift mean the carry is timed rather than continuous. What a table top needs from us is a size, a shape and the base plate it has to be drilled to, and very little else. Wine, citrus and a bleach cloth decide the material.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. Where the van cannot wait, the room has to be ready.

Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. 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 frame needs the clearance the piece does.