Restaurant and cafe table tops in Lea Bridge

Yes. Lea Bridge is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E5. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Frames come off before pallets so the floor stays clear. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Ceilings run to about two point four metres, so wall units, a splashback and an extractor are all competing for the same short band of wall. Parades of this period usually keep a service road or a yard behind them, so a full order can arrive at the back and the dining room stays laid up while it does. Small rooms want small pieces and steady bases. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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. An awkward corner takes a made shape.

The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. 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. A stack of tops is a weight before it is a delivery. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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. Loading rules are confirmed with the operator beforehand.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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 phased opening is planned as a single order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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 count is agreed before the slab is committed.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. 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 seating plan is priced as a list of pieces. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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. Feet are wound out where the floor falls away. 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 a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. 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 lease term is a fair reason to specify differently.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Suspended floors at the front meet a solid slab in the extension somewhere in the middle, and the units sit across the change. What a table top needs from us is a size, a shape and the base plate it has to be drilled to, and very little else. The stone is straightforward and the base fixing is the job.

Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. An unload that overruns costs a service, so it does not.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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. The way in is walked before the van doors open.