Restaurant and cafe table tops in Longlands

Yes. Longlands is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA15. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. 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. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

These were built with generous circulation, so an island or a peninsula fits in a room that would be too tight in a house of the same floor area. The units are wider than an older shopfront, which is what makes a long wall of two-seaters work, and a repeated size is the single cheapest decision on the order because it nests tightly and makes a spare piece worth holding. A high ceiling wants a thicker edge under it. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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. A column in the room is designed around, not cut around.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. 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. Polished faces never travel touching each other. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. 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 really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. The count is agreed before the slab is committed. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Lead time is the reason the date is set early.

Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. 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. A long communal piece is a slab-length question. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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. Banquette seating wants a cantilever foot under it. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The length of the lease is a legitimate reason to specify differently, and nobody should be talked into a decade of surface for five years of trading. Consistency across sites is a decision, not an accident.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The consumer unit and the meter often sit high on the wall at one end of the kitchen, and neither of them is going to move to suit a run of stone. 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 stone is straightforward and the base fixing is the job.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. The frame needs the clearance the piece 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. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. 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. Shapes are drawn rather than described.