Restaurant and cafe table tops in Knight's Hill

Yes. Knight's Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE27. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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. One stop, and the count is proved before we leave. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The original larder or store cupboard usually survives in a corner, and that alcove is deeper than the units and squarer than the walls around it. The trade on streets like these sits in a parade of narrow shopfronts, so the dining room is long and thin and the covers are won by the width of the gangway rather than by the size of the room. A shopfront door is the only way in on most parades. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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.

Timber nosings chip under a slipped edge, so the treads are covered along the whole flight rather than only at the landings. 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 shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. 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. A shared forecourt is booked rather than chanced.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation 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. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. 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. A breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. 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. Offcuts from a counter become the smaller pieces. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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. Send the seating plan with the gangway widths marked, and bring in one of the bases or the maker’s drawing so the bolt centres can be measured properly. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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 licence to alter is not needed for something unfixed.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. Where the van cannot wait, the room has to be ready.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. 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. An under-stairs cupboard eats one end of most of these kitchens, and the run stops at a door that has to keep opening. 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. Outdoor covers take a different stone from indoor ones.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full flight. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Pieces come off the van in the order the room fills.

A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Where the stairwell is narrow enough that the stone travels on edge the polished face runs within an inch of the plaster, so the walls get boarded as well as the steps. What gets damaged on a route like that is a corner, and a table corner is polished, exposed and at precisely the height of a door frame. A trolley run across a forecourt gets boarded like any other.