Restaurant and cafe table tops in New Cross

Yes. New Cross is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. 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. An unload that overruns costs a service, so it does not. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

A villa cut into flats leaves kitchens in rooms that were never kitchens, with services run to wherever they could physically be made to reach. That measurement comes first: once the gangway is fixed the table dimension follows, and on most of these frontages that means a six hundred millimetre square for two and a seven hundred millimetre round where the room widens towards the back. The room is handed back laid up, whatever the building. 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. 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. Feet are wound out where the floor falls away.

Turning a heavy piece on edge indoors needs floor space at both ends of the turn, so the hall is cleared of furniture before anything comes off the van. 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. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. The bay is booked against the fitting date, not the week.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Four kitchens ordered together take one template visit and one delivery, and that is where the saving comes from rather than from a discount on the stone. 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. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it. Rooms in a shared house are let individually, so the work has to be done around whoever is still living in the building. 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 second site is quoted from the same specification.

A single long run down one side puts every cut-out in one piece, so the sink, the hob and any drainer grooves all take material out of the same 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. The gangway sets the dimension, not the drawing. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. The base carries the weight and the floor carries the base. 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. Access in a tenanted flat depends on the tenant, so the template and fitting dates are agreed with whoever actually holds the keys. 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. Ten years of service is a different specification entirely.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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. The unload is timed between service, never through it.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The flat entrance door and the internal doorways are usually tighter than the communal stairs, which is the opposite of what most people assume. A unit in an old parade rarely has rear access, which means every top and every base comes through the front door in the order it will be set out. A goods lift takes a frame and saves a morning.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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. A shallow room decides the diameter early.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A galley run down a side-return extension usually measures longer than a slab will give in one length, so a join is designed in from the start rather than discovered. 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. Offcuts from a counter become the smaller pieces.