Restaurant and cafe table tops in Thornton Heath

Yes. Thornton Heath is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR7. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Estate roads inside a controlled zone are sometimes managed privately rather than by the council, which changes who has to be asked. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. One stop, and the count is proved before we leave. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The addition is one room wide, so the run is a galley with a door at one end and a window at the other and no wall long enough for anything else. The trade on streets like these sits in a parade of narrow shopfronts, so the dining room is long and thin and the covers are won by the width of the gangway rather than by the size of the room. The room is handed back laid up, whatever the building. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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. An awkward corner takes a made shape.

Spindles and a newel cap stand proud of the string, so the usable width on a turn is measured to the handrail rather than to the wall behind it. 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 way in is walked before the van doors open. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. 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 shared forecourt is booked rather than chanced.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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. A breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should.

An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. 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. The blank decides the diameter, not the other way round. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. 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. Feet are wound out where the floor falls away. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. Nothing is ordered against a verbal instruction.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. The base carries the weight and the floor carries the base.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. Where the van cannot wait, the room has to be ready.

Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The top step is rarely the end of it, because a door swinging out onto the landing has to be held back before a piece can come off the flight. 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. Larger diameters go in early, while the floor is still clear.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. 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. Mixed sizes are fine; unplanned mixed sizes are not.