Restaurant and cafe table tops in Millwall

Yes. Millwall is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. 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. 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 shared forecourt is booked rather than chanced. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Floor-to-ceiling glazing lights the worktop from one side all day, which shows every ripple in a polished surface and every gap at a scribe. The commercial space in a new block is a ground-floor unit with a service bay or a loading door behind it, and that is the most straightforward delivery a table order gets: a level threshold, a flat floor and a goods lift where the unit runs over more than one level. What the parade allows is what the room can seat. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. 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. Weight low, spread wide, and it stays put.

An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. 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. Larger diameters go in early, while the floor is still clear. 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. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Where the van cannot wait, the room has to be ready.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop replacement 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. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything 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. Buying twice costs more than buying deep once. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. 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. A phased opening is planned as a single order.

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. Shapes are drawn rather than described. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. 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 step in the floor is a base decision. Send the fit-out drawing with final table positions and sizes, the base specification, and the delivery window the managing agent is prepared to accept. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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. Specified for the term, not for a decade by default.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. 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. Rounds waste the corners of their blank where squares do not, so the mix of shapes moves the slab count more than the number of covers does. Nothing is cut until the seating plan stops moving.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Open-plan living makes the kitchen furniture rather than utility, so the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab. The complication is the programme rather than the building. Deliveries follow the premises rather than the postcode.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. 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. No money is taken before the template happens. Everything arrives through one controlled entrance with a booking sheet, and a delivery that misses its slot waits. 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. A dining room is a batch, and a batch is one slab run.

How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. 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. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. 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. The count is agreed before the slab is committed.