Restaurant and cafe table tops in Old Bexley

Yes. Old Bexley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA5. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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. The unload is timed between service, never through it. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Many have had the ground floor chimney breast removed to gain three hundred millimetres, and the gained strip is newer blockwork standing proud of the old plaster. The trade on streets like these sits in a parade of narrow shopfronts, so the dining room is long and thin and the covers are won by the width of the gangway rather than by the size of the room. Converted houses mean several sizes, not one. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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. The base carries the weight and the floor carries the base.

Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. 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 stack of tops is a weight before it is a delivery. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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 whole order comes off in one movement wherever it can.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop replacement. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. 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. 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. The programme decides the delivery, not the workshop. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it.

A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. 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. A long communal piece is a slab-length question. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

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. 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 shallow room decides the diameter early. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. 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. 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. Sharp corners are eased wherever people pass.

There is nothing to pay before the template visit. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Chimney breasts are often taken out at ground level and left standing above, so the middle of the run is newer wall than the two ends of it. 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. Made to the plate you own, so nothing else has to be replaced.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. 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. The measurement that governs everything here is the gangway, because it caps the diameter before anybody has chosen a colour. Weight low, spread wide, and it stays put.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. Tops travel upright in a padded frame, and it is the frame rather than the person carrying it that has to clear the tightest turn. Battens under anything that has to wait.