Restaurant and cafe table tops in Lower Sydenham

Yes. Lower Sydenham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE26. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. A long push from the kerb is planned, not discovered. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The kitchen has a door to the hall, a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the continuous run is short in every direction. That forecourt is the carry, and it is longer than it looks, so the pieces travel the last stretch on a trolley in a frame rather than being walked in by hand. A rear yard is worth an hour of the day. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. Radiators and rails cap the depth of a two-seat piece.

Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. 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. Each piece is checked off against the plan as it lands. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. 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 programme decides the delivery, not the workshop.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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. An awkward corner takes a made shape. Tell us how close a van can get to the door, and whether the tables have to be moved regularly, since that decides the thickness before anything else does. Method statements, insurance certificates and named operatives are wanted before a crew is cleared to attend, all of which is routine when it is asked for a week out. 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.

If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. 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. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it.

The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. There is nothing to pay before the template visit. The balcony door frequently opens off the kitchen, which puts a threshold, a draught and a well-used route through one end of the run. 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 bases stay yours and only the surface changes.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Built-in stores and a fuel place beside the back door were standard, and one of them is usually still sitting in the corner of the kitchen. The trade in this stock is a row of units under a block, usually a roller shutter with a shallow room behind it. A high ceiling wants a thicker edge under it.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. 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.