Restaurant and cafe table tops in Herne Hill

Yes. Herne Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE24. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. 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. Somewhere to stand the frames matters more than the distance. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original joinery is deep and stands proud of the plaster, so the run is plotted to the units rather than to the wall behind them. 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. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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. Fixed seating fixes the dimension it faces.

Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. 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 stack of tops is a weight before it is a delivery. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. 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 clock on the kerb changes the order of unloading.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop templating 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. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. Ordered as a set, so the set matches. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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 second room is easier to match if it is mentioned now.

Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. 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. Rectangles nest and rounds do not. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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. Overhang past the plate is where a table tips. 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. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. 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 invoice and the approval carry the same name.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The kitchen is nearly always in a later rear or side extension, so half the room is a century older than the other half and the two meet mid-run. 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 base plate settles the drilling before the stone is cut.

How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. 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. A fit-out programme runs to an opening date that does not move, so the sizes are frozen and the slab committed earlier than most jobs need. Spares are cheap while the run is still on the ground.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. 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. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Battens under anything that has to wait.