Restaurant and cafe table tops in Royal Arsenal Riverside

Yes. Royal Arsenal Riverside is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE18. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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 clock on the kerb changes the order of unloading. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, 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. A goods lift takes a frame and saves a morning. A lightweight stud partition will not carry a breakfast bar or a peninsula end, and stone finds that out faster than laminate ever did. 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.

Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short.

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 templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. 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 breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. Where an operator changes hands the bases usually stay, so a refit becomes a resurface and the saving comes from what is already bolted down. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. 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 spare comes off the same run or it is not a spare. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. 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. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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. A managed building wants notice and it gets notice.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. 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. Larger diameters go in early, while the floor is still clear.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Ceiling heights are held to the minimum the plan allows, so the panel between worktop and wall units is a short piece. The complication is the programme rather than the building. Old floors fall away and the feet take it up.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. 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. The van stays until the last piece is on its base.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. The kitchen is usually part of the living space, so three edges are read from a sofa rather than from standing height at the sink. 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. Chosen for service, not for the photographs on opening night.