Restaurant and cafe table tops in Pratts Bottom

Yes. Pratts Bottom is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

A period cottage has low ceilings, thick rubble-filled walls and a floor that has never been level, and the worktop is the thing that has to look straight. Hospitality in an area like this is usually a converted house or an old inn, so the dining space is several small rooms rather than one, and each room takes a different table size. A loading bay is the easiest delivery there is. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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. Sharp corners are eased wherever people pass.

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. 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 way in is walked before the van doors open. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop fabrication. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. 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. A second site is quoted from the same specification. 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. Held stock is worth more than a discount.

A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. 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. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. Weight low, spread wide, and it stays put. Send a plan of each room with its table sizes against it, and say which covers are outdoors so the material can be split before anything is priced. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. 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 specification is written so it can be repeated.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. These are the multi-piece jobs, where vein direction across a join matters as much as the join itself. 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. Thickness is a look and a lifting weight at the same time.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. 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.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Larger diameters go in early, while the floor is still clear.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. 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. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. A step in the floor is a base decision.