Restaurant and cafe table tops in Shortlands

Yes. Shortlands is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR2. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The step down from the main house into the addition is commonly a hundred to a hundred and fifty millimetres, which gives the kitchen a different floor datum from the rest of the ground floor. That measurement comes first: once the gangway is fixed the table dimension follows, and on most of these frontages that means a six hundred millimetre square for two and a seven hundred millimetre round where the room widens towards the back. Terraces and gardens live outdoors all year. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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.

Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. 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 last thing carried in is the first one set out. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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.

On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. 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. Colour is matched across the room, not table by table. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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. Radiators and rails cap the depth of a two-seat piece. Send the seating plan with the gangway widths marked, and bring in one of the bases or the maker’s drawing so the bolt centres can be measured properly. 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. 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. Decisions made remotely still need a physical sample.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. No money changes hands before the template. Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. 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. Sizes agreed on paper before any slab is committed.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. The van stays until the last piece is on its base.

Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. 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. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. An awkward corner takes a made shape.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. A cellar stair is not a route for stone.