Restaurant and cafe table tops in Sundridge Park

Yes. Sundridge Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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. The bay is booked against the fitting date, not the week. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The original kitchen was a small rear room with a larder and a back door, and nearly all of them have since been opened into the dining room. Parades of this period usually keep a service road or a yard behind them, so a full order can arrive at the back and the dining room stays laid up while it does. The room is handed back laid up, whatever the building. 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. What the room does to the base matters more than the wall.

Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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 cellar stair is not a route for stone. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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 unload is timed between service, never through it.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. 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 kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Ordered as a set, so the set matches. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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 second room is easier to match if it is mentioned now.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. 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. Two-seaters and four-seaters come off one slab run. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

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. A thin top over a wide plate wants a pad underneath. Confirm how many covers go outside, and tell us whether the outdoor bases share the pattern of the indoor ones, since they often do not. 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. 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 lease term is a fair reason to specify differently.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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. A whole order comes off in one movement wherever it can.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. Rounds waste the corners of their blank where squares do not, so the mix of shapes moves the slab count more than the number of covers does. The count per slab is worked before a figure is given.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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. Tops travel upright in a frame, faces apart.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. 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. Where a servery run forces a join, the tables never carry one, because a table top is a single piece of stone or it is not a table top. A long communal piece is a slab-length question.