Restaurant and cafe table tops in Waterloo

Yes. Waterloo is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. Counted off at the tail lift where the standing is short. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. 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. A narrow frontage is a small diameter, honestly stated. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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. Weight low, spread wide, and it stays put.

Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass 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. Bases go in first and tops go in last. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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. The van stays until the last piece is on its base.

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 templating. 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. Spares are cheap while the run is still on the ground. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. The batch reference goes on file with the drawing.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. 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. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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. A step in the floor is a base decision. 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. Managed stock usually comes with its own rules about working hours, waste, and who is allowed on site. The length of the lease is a legitimate reason to specify differently, and nobody should be talked into a decade of surface for five years of trading. Ten years of service is a different specification entirely.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. 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.

Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. 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.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. A unit in an old parade rarely has rear access, which means every top and every base comes through the front door in the order it will be set out. What the parade allows is what the room can seat.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. 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. Every dimension quoted is a finished dimension.