Restaurant and cafe table tops in Kidbrooke

Yes. Kidbrooke is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE3, SE9. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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. The plan on the van matches the plan on the floor. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

An infill house is built to modern standards on an old plot, so the room is square even though the site around it is not. The commercial space in a new block is a ground-floor unit with a service bay or a loading door behind it, and that is the most straightforward delivery a table order gets: a level threshold, a flat floor and a goods lift where the unit runs over more than one level. A shell unit is drawn before it is measured. Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. 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 pedestal is checked for spread before a size is agreed.

Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. 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. The turn is measured for the frame, not for a person. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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 long push from the kerb is planned, not discovered.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. 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. Buying twice costs more than buying deep once. 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. 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 phased opening is planned as a single order.

A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind 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 count per slab is worked before a figure is given. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A lightweight stud partition will not carry a breakfast bar or a peninsula end, and stone finds that out faster than laminate ever did. 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. A column in the room is designed around, not cut around. Send the fit-out drawing with final table positions and sizes, the base specification, and the delivery window the managing agent is prepared to accept. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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. Whoever signs off is agreed before machining starts.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. 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. Wrapping stays on until the pedestal is standing.

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. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Underfloor heating in a screed rules out fixing into the floor and rules out standing anything heavy on a single point. 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. Sizes agreed on paper before any slab is committed.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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. Frames come off before pallets so the floor stays clear.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. 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. A long communal piece is a slab-length question.