Restaurant and cafe table tops in Old Kent Road

Yes. Old Kent Road is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1, SE15. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. 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. 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 long push from the kerb is planned, not discovered. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Underfloor heating in the screed means nothing is fixed into the floor, so an island is anchored to the carcasses alone. The commercial space in a new block is a ground-floor unit with a service bay or a loading door behind it, and that is the most straightforward delivery a table order gets: a level threshold, a flat floor and a goods lift where the unit runs over more than one level. Terraces and gardens live outdoors all year. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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.

Concierge buildings want the goods entrance, a booked lift and proof of insurance, all of which is straightforward when it is asked for a week 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. Nothing is stacked flat on a dining room floor. 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. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Frames come off before pallets so the floor stays clear.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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 specification repeated across several plots has to be repeatable, which quietly rules out the natural stones where no two slabs match. 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. Lead time is the reason the date is set early. Replacing one plot years after handover is the problem nobody plans for, because a quartz colour can be reordered and a granite block cannot. 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 breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem.

An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. 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 circle wastes its corners, and the quote says so. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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 fit-out drawing with final table positions and sizes, the base specification, and the delivery window the managing agent is prepared to accept. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. The length of the lease is a legitimate reason to specify differently, and nobody should be talked into a decade of surface for five years of trading. Loose furniture rather than a landlord fixture.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. 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. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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 tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. 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. Rectangles nest and rounds do not.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Ceiling heights are held to the minimum the plan allows, so the panel between worktop and wall units is a short piece. The commercial space in a block like this is a ground-floor unit with a service bay behind it, which is the easiest delivery a table order ever gets. Converted houses mean several sizes, not one.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Every flat on the floor is the same plan handed left and right, so the room is predictable even where the building is not. Units of this kind are handed over as a shell, so the tops are ordered against a fit-out programme with a fixed opening date at the end of it. A loading bay is the easiest delivery there is.