Restaurant and cafe table tops in Arsenal

Yes. Arsenal is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N5, N7. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. The practical answer is to check the fixture list before the date is offered, because a template slot lost to a road closure cannot be recovered that week. 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. Nothing is left on a pavement while a space is found. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The original larder or store cupboard usually survives in a corner, and that alcove is deeper than the units and squarer than the walls around it. 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. 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. 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. Sharp corners are eased wherever people pass.

Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. 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. Where an event closes the road entirely, the van cannot be moved once it is in, which is a different problem from not being able to park at all. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Delivery is booked to the room, not to a half day.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should. 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. The programme decides the delivery, not the workshop.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. 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 largest blank is nested first and the rest around it. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

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. 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. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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 brand standard is followed to the letter or not at all.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. 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. A poseur height changes the base and not the blank.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Rear rooms of this date have a wide sash or a pair of garden doors, so a good deal of the wall the run wants is glass. The commercial frontage on streets like these is a narrow shop with the dining room running back from the pavement, so the tops go in past furniture that is already down. Pavement covers take their own specification.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. A lift takes a loaded frame or it takes nothing.

It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. 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. 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.