Restaurant and cafe table tops in West Heath

Yes. West Heath is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE2, DA16. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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 bases are the heavy pallet, not the tops. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. 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. Converted houses mean several sizes, not one. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. The clearance under a fixed shelf is measured, not assumed.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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. Somewhere to stand the frames matters more than the distance.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. Sizes are frozen before machining rather than during it. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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 site is quoted from the same specification.

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. 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 circle wastes its corners, and the quote says so. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. Room by room, since no two of them are the same. 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. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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. Dilapidations do not reach what was never fixed down.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. A cellar stair is not a route for stone.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. The under-stair cupboard opens off the kitchen in most of them, and its door swing is the reason a corner run stops where it does. Parades of this period usually keep a service yard behind them, so tops and bases arrive at the back and the dining room stays laid up while they do. A loading bay is the easiest delivery there is.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The window over the sink sits at about worktop height, so the run is set out around the sill and the reveal rather than under them. 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. Base spread against top size is checked before a size is agreed.

A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Tops travel upright in a frame, faces apart.