Restaurant and cafe table tops in Grove Park

Yes. Grove Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE12. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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. Delivery is booked to the room, not to a half day. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Original quarry-tiled floors sit lower than a later screed, so a run crossing that junction needs the units packed to one level. 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. A narrow frontage is a small diameter, honestly stated. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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. Banquette seating wants a cantilever foot under it.

Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. Corners take the knocks, so corners get the padding. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Empty frames go back on the van the same trip.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. The batch reference goes on file with the drawing. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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. Repeat work is quoted against the original, not from scratch.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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 set is laid out together before anything is wrapped. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

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 rocking table is a floor problem and not a stone one. 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. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. 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. Who pays and who approves are worth naming early.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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. Pieces come off the van in the order the room fills.

Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. A trolley run across a forecourt gets boarded like any other.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. 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 seating plan sets the sizes before the slab does.

Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. The kitchen sits at the rear with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the useful run is broken into two short lengths. The units are wider than an older shopfront and take a proper run of two-seaters down one wall, which is where a repeated size earns its keep. Pavement covers take their own specification.