Restaurant and cafe table tops in Harold Park

Yes. Harold Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM3. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. 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. 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. Empty frames go back on the van the same trip. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

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. Parades of this period usually keep a service yard behind them, so tops and bases arrive at the back and the dining room stays laid up while they do. Pavement covers take their own specification. 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. 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. The gangway is a measurement rather than an impression.

A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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. Pieces come off the van in the order the room fills. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. 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 suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning.

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 design & quotation. 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. 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. 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. Fit-out dates are worked backwards from the opening. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. The bases usually stay and only the pieces change.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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. Two-seaters and four-seaters come off one slab run. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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. Fixed seating fixes the dimension it faces. 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. The length of the lease is a legitimate reason to specify differently, and nobody should be talked into a decade of surface for five years of trading. Decisions made remotely still need a physical sample.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Overhang past the plate is where a table tips.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. 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. The count per slab is worked before a figure is given.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. 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 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. 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. A trolley run across a forecourt gets boarded like any other.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. 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. Pieces are staged inside before the van is moved off.