Restaurant and cafe table tops in Shad Thames

Yes. Shad Thames is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. 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. 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. Delivery is booked to the room, not to a half day. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. These units are large and open, which is where the long communal table shows up, and a piece longer than a slab is a decision rather than a detail: either two tops meeting over a central leg, or a single piece in a material that comes in a longer sheet. Roller shutters and bollards lengthen the carry. 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. A column in the room is designed around, not cut around.

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. A stack of tops is a weight before it is a delivery. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Empty frames go back on the van the same trip.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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. Orders are counted in pieces and never in metres. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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. Ordered as a set, so the set matches.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. 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. The gangway sets the dimension, not the drawing. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

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. 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. Banquette seating wants a cantilever foot under it. Give us the communal table length and the base positions along it, and confirm the goods lift dimensions so the frames can be sized to the car. Access in a tenanted flat depends on the tenant, so the template and fitting dates are agreed with whoever actually holds the keys. 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 operator chooses and the freeholder rarely has to.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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. Offcuts from a counter become the smaller pieces.

Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Concrete or steel overhead means no fixings into the ceiling and no help from the structure for anything hung above the run. 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. Wine, citrus and a bleach cloth decide the material.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Steel columns and downstands land where the frame put them, which is frequently in the middle of what would otherwise be a clean run. The delivery is straightforward by comparison, since a goods lift and a loading door will take a full frame and a whole floor can be staged in one movement. Terraces and gardens live outdoors all year.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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. A second room is easier to match if it is mentioned now.