Restaurant and cafe table tops in New Eltham

Yes. New Eltham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE9. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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. Where the van cannot wait, the room has to be ready. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

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. Parades of this period usually keep a service road or a yard behind them, so a full order can arrive at the back and the dining room stays laid up while it does. A shopfront door is the only way in on most parades. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. 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. Banquette seating wants a cantilever foot under it.

Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. The frame needs the clearance the piece does. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Deliveries land before the doors open wherever possible.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop design & quotation. 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. 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. 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 breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should.

With three walls in play the chance of one of them being out of square is high, and the template has to carry all three angles. 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. One repeated size cuts better than six one-offs. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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 rocking table is a floor problem and not a stone one. 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. 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. Nothing is ordered against a verbal instruction.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. 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 plan on the van matches the plan on the floor.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. The advantage of a U is that every join can be put over a gable in a corner, so nothing lands in the middle of a clear length. 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. Cut from the same run as the counter, so the room agrees.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The old larder leaves behind a thick cold shelf and a vent brick through the outer wall, and both have to go before that wall reads flat. 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. Sizes agreed on paper before any slab is committed.

Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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 gangway is a measurement rather than an impression.