Restaurant and cafe table tops in Thames View

Yes. Thames View is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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 measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The wall between the kitchen and the hall is load-bearing blockwork rather than a stud, so an opening through it is a lintel job and not an afternoon with a bolster. The trade in this stock is a row of units under a block: a roller shutter, a shallow room behind it and a paved forecourt in front with bollards across the approach. Terraces and gardens live outdoors all year. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. 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 shallow room decides the diameter early.

Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. 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. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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 really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation 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. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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. A second room is easier to match if it is mentioned now. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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. Spares are cheap while the run is still on the ground.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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. What a counter leaves behind is worth designing for. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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. Sharp corners are eased wherever people pass. Tell us how close a van can get to the door, and whether the tables have to be moved regularly, since that decides the thickness before anything else does. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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. Consistency across sites is a decision, not an accident.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. 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 suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. 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 largest blank is nested first and the rest around it.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The ceiling is a concrete soffit with a skim on it, so there is nothing to fix into overhead and no void to hide anything in. 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 stone is straightforward and the base fixing is the job.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Whole streets went up to two or three plans, so the house next door has the same kitchen and forty years of extensions have made none of them measure the same. That forecourt is the carry, and it is longer than it looks, so the pieces travel the last stretch on a trolley in a frame rather than being walked in by hand. Converted houses mean several sizes, not one.