Restaurant and cafe table tops in Hacton

Yes. Hacton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM12. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These were built with generous circulation, so an island or a peninsula fits in a room that would be too tight in a house of the same floor area. The units are wider than an older shopfront, which is what makes a long wall of two-seaters work, and a repeated size is the single cheapest decision on the order because it nests tightly and makes a spare piece worth holding. A narrow frontage is a small diameter, honestly stated. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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.

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. 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. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. 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.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop replacement. 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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. Orders are counted in pieces and never in metres. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. Ordered as a set, so the set matches.

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. Mixed sizes are fine; unplanned mixed sizes are not. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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. 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. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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. A managed building wants notice and it gets notice.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. The roof space above carries services, so a boiler flue or a soil vent can drop into a corner of the kitchen and stay exactly there. 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.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Everything on one level means no stairs, no landings and no turns, which is about the easiest carry there is in domestic work. Flats sit over most of these parades, so the noisy part of a fit-out is timed against the people upstairs rather than against the trade. What the parade allows is what the room can seat.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Three runs means two internal corners, and each corner is a decision about mitre or butt joint before anything is nested. Rounds waste the corners of their blank where squares do not, so the mix of shapes moves the slab count more than the number of covers does. What a counter leaves behind is worth designing for.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A U shape uses more linear metres than people expect, and the two returns rarely nest together, so a second slab is a genuine possibility. 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. The largest blank is nested first and the rest around it.