Restaurant and cafe table tops in Streatham

Yes. Streatham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW16. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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. Somewhere to stand the frames matters more than the distance. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The structure below is commercial, so the floor is often timber over a shop ceiling and the load path under an island is worth thinking about. A whole slab still gets reserved, because a dozen matching tops is the entire point of ordering them together. The room is handed back laid up, whatever the building. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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. What the room does to the base matters more than the wall.

A handrail that has to come off before a piece will pass is twenty minutes at the start of the day, and it goes back on the wall before we leave. 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. Battens under anything that has to wait. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. A clock on the kerb changes the order of unloading.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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. Orders are counted in pieces and never in metres. 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. 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.

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. A set is laid out together before anything is wrapped. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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. A thin top over a wide plate wants a pad underneath. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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 short term does not justify a surface that fails early.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. Uneven flags outside are why outdoor feet adjust.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Doorways are 762mm at best, and the turn from the hall into the kitchen is the pinch point rather than the front door. 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. The base plate settles the drilling before the stone is cut.

Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Nothing is payable in advance of the template. Plaster over blockwork is thin and hollow in patches, so anything fixed back to the wall needs a sound spot found first. A dining room orders tops in sets, so the question is never one piece but twenty that have to read as one colour. Twenty tops that match, not twenty that nearly do.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. 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. Two-seaters and four-seaters come off one slab run.