Restaurant and cafe table tops in Scrattons Farm

Yes. Scrattons Farm is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. 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. Loading rules are confirmed with the operator beforehand. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These were built on a solid ground floor slab, so nothing bounces and nothing can be packed down, only up. Trade in this stock is a single shopfront with a small room behind it, so an order is a dozen pieces rather than fifty, and that changes what is worth doing rather than how it is done. Small rooms want small pieces and steady bases. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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. Every piece is offered up to its own pedestal.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. 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. Larger diameters go in early, while the floor is still clear. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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 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 installation and worktop templating. 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. 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. Turnover between operators rarely changes the pedestals. 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. Match it now or hunt for it later.

Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. 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. Rectangles nest and rounds do not. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. Nothing is trimmed on site to make it fit. Bring in one base, or send the maker’s plate drawing, and tell us the table count including any spares you want to hold back. 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. 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. Who pays and who approves are worth naming early.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. The bay is booked against the fitting date, not the week.

Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. 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 lift takes a loaded frame or it takes nothing.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. 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. Handling is where a polished edge gets damaged.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Plaster over blockwork is thin and hollow in patches, so anything fixed back to the wall needs a sound spot found first. 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. A dining room is a batch, and a batch is one slab run.