Restaurant and cafe table tops in Royal Albert Wharf

Yes. Royal Albert Wharf is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E16. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. Somewhere to stand the frames matters more than the distance. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

A balcony door is the only other opening in the flat and it leads nowhere useful, so everything comes in through the front door. The complication is the programme rather than the building. A rear yard is worth an hour of the day. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. 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. Fixed seating fixes the dimension it faces.

A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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. Each piece is checked off against the plan as it lands. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. A clock on the kerb changes the order of unloading.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. What one room learns, the next room uses. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Turnover between operators rarely changes the pedestals.

Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. 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. Every dimension quoted is a finished dimension. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. 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. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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. A managed building wants notice and it gets notice.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Stud centres are almost never where the brackets would like to be, so fixing positions get set from the framing and the stone is designed to suit. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Radiators and rails cap the depth of a two-seat piece.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. 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. Nothing is carried past a chair still in the gangway.

Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. 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. A fit-out programme runs to an opening date that does not move, so the sizes are frozen and the slab committed earlier than most jobs need. Match it now or hunt for it later.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Sprinkler heads and extract ducts are coordinated into the ceiling, so an extractor over an island goes where the services already allow. 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 high ceiling wants a thicker edge under it.