Restaurant and cafe table tops in Lewisham

Yes. Lewisham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE13. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of the borough. 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. 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. Frames come off before pallets so the floor stays clear. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Where the addition is single storey the ceiling follows a lean-to roof, so one side of the room loses height and a full-height panel has a sloping stop. 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. Long hours push the choice towards a harder face. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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.

Standing a three-metre length on end takes more headroom outside the car than inside it, and a low lobby ceiling is what actually stops it. 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. 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. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Loading rules are confirmed with the operator beforehand.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. 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. Mixed sizes are fine; unplanned mixed sizes are not. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. 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 template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. 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. Corners eased, since chair backs find them first.

Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. The gangway is a measurement rather than an impression.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. An unload that overruns costs a service, so it does not.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. 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. What a counter leaves behind is worth designing for.