Restaurant and cafe table tops in Myatt's Fields

Yes. Myatt's Fields is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE5, SW9. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. 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 quiet hour is worth more to us than a close bay. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Some of these plans put a bathroom on the ground floor off the kitchen, so a third door opens into a room that already has more doors than wall. The trade in this stock is a row of units under a block: a roller shutter, a shallow room behind it and a paved forecourt in front with bollards across the approach. Long hours push the choice towards a harder face. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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. An awkward corner takes a made shape.

Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. 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 lift takes a loaded frame or it takes nothing. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Nothing is left on a pavement while a space is found.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. 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 second site is quoted from the same specification. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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. Held stock is worth more than a discount.

Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. 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 count per slab is worked before a figure is given. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. Feet are wound out where the floor falls away. 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. A leaseholder paying for their own kitchen inside managed stock still needs the freeholder to consent, and that consent is about the building and the common parts rather than about the worktop. 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 licence to alter is not needed for something unfixed.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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 base carries the weight and the floor carries the base.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. 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. A long communal piece is a slab-length question.

Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. A shallow room decides the diameter early.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. 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. Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. 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. Shapes are drawn rather than described.