Restaurant and cafe table tops in Wallington

Yes. Wallington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SM6. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Sutton. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A deep butler sink and a boiling tap on the same length put two heavy cut-outs within a metre of each other. Hospitality in an area like this is usually a converted house or an old inn, so the dining space is several small rooms rather than one, and each room takes a different table size. A rear yard is worth an hour of the day. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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. Uneven flags outside are why outdoor feet adjust.

Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. 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. Bases go in first and tops go in last. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before 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 suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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. The programme decides the delivery, not the workshop. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it.

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. 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 poseur height changes the base and not the blank. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

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. 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. The clearance under a fixed shelf is measured, not assumed. Send a plan of each room with its table sizes against it, and say which covers are outdoors so the material can be split before anything is priced. 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 licence to alter is not needed for something unfixed.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. 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. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. 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. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Room by room, since no two of them are the same.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Ceilings are high enough that an extractor over the island has a long drop, and its position is fixed before the island top is templated. That is fine, but it has to be drawn: a room of one-offs prices differently from a room of repeats, and the difference is real rather than a markup. A high ceiling wants a thicker edge under it.

The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Nothing is stacked flat on a dining room floor.

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. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. 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. Squares off one slab and rounds off another, where that is cheaper.