Restaurant and cafe table tops in Plaistow

Yes. Plaistow is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E13. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Loading rules are confirmed with the operator beforehand. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The chimney breast has almost always been taken out of the kitchen with the stack left standing above it, so that bay of wall is newer plasterwork on a different plane. 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. A loading bay is the easiest delivery there is. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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. Overhang past the plate is where a table tips.

A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. 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. Packaging goes back on the van rather than into the yard. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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. An unload that overruns costs a service, so it does not.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here 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. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it. 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. A second site is quoted from the same specification.

The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. 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. Veining is laid out so no two pieces read as a pair. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. Radiators and rails cap the depth of a two-seat piece. 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. Ownership of the pedestals is worth establishing early.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. 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. A spare comes off the same run or it is not a spare.

Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Nothing is payable in advance of the template. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. 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. The stone is straightforward and the base fixing is the job.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Ceilings are high in these, so wall unit heights and splashback heights are open choices rather than things the room has already decided. A unit in an old parade rarely has rear access, which means every top and every base comes through the front door in the order it will be set out. The room is handed back laid up, whatever the building.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Whether the kitchen sits straight ahead or off a turn at the end of the hall changes the maximum piece far more than the hall width does. 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. Pieces are numbered so none of them is carried twice.