Restaurant and cafe table tops in Nunhead

Yes. Nunhead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE15. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. 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. 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. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The rear room has a bay or a wide window onto the garden, so the sink length is short and the real working length is on the return. 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. Communal lengths belong in the larger units. 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. 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. Nothing is scribed, because nothing meets a wall.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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 turn is measured for the frame, not for a person. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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 van stays until the last piece is on its base.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone 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. One set of decisions, repeated across the whole room. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Buying twice costs more than buying deep once.

Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. 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. Colour is matched across the room, not table by table. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. Levelled at the feet, never packed under the stone. 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. Managed stock usually comes with its own rules about working hours, waste, and who is allowed on site. 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. The drawing goes to whoever has to approve it.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. 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. 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 pedestal is checked for spread before a size is agreed.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. A quiet hour is worth more to us than a close bay.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Original quarry tile is often still down under two or three later floor coverings, which is why the finished floor height is rarely what anyone expects. 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. Twenty tops that match, not twenty that nearly do.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. The external wall on the passage side has never been rendered, so it is cold, solid and honest to fix into. The commercial frontage on streets like these is a narrow shop with the dining room running back from the pavement, so the tops go in past furniture that is already down. A basement is for prep and not for storing stone.