Restaurant and cafe table tops in South Norwood

Yes. South Norwood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE25. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. 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. Pieces are staged inside before the van is moved off. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Cottage terraces have no hall to speak of and the front door opens almost straight into the room, which makes the carry easier and the protection harder. 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. A goods lift takes a frame and saves a morning. 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. 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. Every piece is offered up to its own pedestal.

A pendant light hanging in the middle of a hall ceiling sets the angle a piece can be tilted to, and it is the measurement nobody thinks to take. 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. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. The pavement stays walkable while the frames come off.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop replacement. 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. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone 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. A trial piece before a large order is money well spent.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. 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. Veining is laid out so no two pieces read as a pair. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. Nothing is trimmed on site to make it fit. 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. Planned programmes run several kitchens in sequence, so template, fabrication and fitting move as a rolling operation and one uncollected key holds up more than one flat. 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.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. 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. One stop, and the count is proved before we leave.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A hall that widens further in is still only as good as its tightest point, and that point is usually within a metre of the front door. 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 cellar stair is not a route for stone.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. No money is taken before the template happens. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Original quarry tile is often still down under two or three later floor coverings, which is why the finished floor height is rarely what anyone expects. 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. Four finished edges and a set of blind holes, and that is the piece.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. What the room does to the base matters more than the wall.