Restaurant and cafe table tops in Woolwich

Yes. Woolwich is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE18. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. A quiet hour is worth more to us than a close bay. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Internal walls are lath on timber studs while the flank walls are brick, so two walls in the same kitchen take a fixing completely differently. 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. Covers decide the count, and the count decides the order. 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. 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. Every piece is offered up to its own pedestal.

Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. 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. Larger diameters go in early, while the floor is still clear. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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. Nothing is left on a pavement while a space is found.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating 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 new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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 bases usually stay and only the pieces change. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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 refit is a resurface where the pedestals are sound.

A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. 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. Rectangles nest and rounds do not. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. Nothing is trimmed on site to make it fit. 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. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. 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 short term does not justify a surface that fails early.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. 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. Chosen for service, not for the photographs on opening night.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Original quarry tile is often still down under two or three later floor coverings, which is why the finished floor height is rarely what anyone expects. What a table top needs from us is a size, a shape and the base plate it has to be drilled to, and very little else. A true circle comes off a machine and never off a hand.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. What the room does to the base matters more than the wall.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. 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 lift takes a loaded frame or it takes nothing.