Restaurant and cafe table tops in Orpington

Yes. Orpington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR5, BR6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. 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 plan on the van matches the plan on the floor. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

The roof space above carries services, so a boiler flue or a soil vent can drop into a corner of the kitchen and stay exactly there. Parades of this period usually keep a service yard behind them, so tops and bases arrive at the back and the dining room stays laid up while they do. Roller shutters and bollards lengthen the carry. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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 gangway is a measurement rather than an impression.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. A stack of tops is a weight before it is a delivery. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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 long push from the kerb is planned, not discovered.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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 U puts the sink in one leg, the hob in another and any drainer grooves in whatever is left, which spreads the cut-outs about but does not reduce the machining time. 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. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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. Fixed seating fixes the dimension it faces. 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. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. 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. An incoming operator inherits the pedestals, not the choice.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. A serving hatch through to the dining room is common, and closing one up leaves a panel of newer wall exactly where the run passes. 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. Cut to your bases rather than to a size off a list.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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. Overhang past the plate is where a table tips.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The chimney breast in the kitchen once took a copper or a back boiler, and whatever is left of it is rarely square to the rest of the room. What a table top needs from us is a size, a shape and the base plate it has to be drilled to, and very little else. A dining room is a batch, and a batch is one slab run.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Battens under anything that has to wait.