Restaurant and cafe table tops in Bank

Yes. Bank is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2R, EC3V. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. 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. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Handover kitchens are fitted with the cheapest carcass the specification allowed, and cam-lock chipboard boxes are what a stone top has to sit on. The commercial space in a new block is a ground-floor unit with a service bay or a loading door behind it, and that is the most straightforward delivery a table order gets: a level threshold, a flat floor and a goods lift where the unit runs over more than one level. What the parade allows is what the room can seat. Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. 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. Weight low, spread wide, and it stays put.

Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. 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. Tops travel upright in a frame, faces apart. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. 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 van stays until the last piece is on its base.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation. 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. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. A breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. 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. Colour is matched across the room, not table by table. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A lightweight stud partition will not carry a breakfast bar or a peninsula end, and stone finds that out faster than laminate ever did. 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 fit-out drawing with final table positions and sizes, the base specification, and the delivery window the managing agent is prepared to accept. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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. The drawing goes to whoever has to approve it.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. A quiet hour is worth more to us than a close bay.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. 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. Veining is laid out so no two pieces read as a pair.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Everything arrives through one controlled entrance with a booking sheet, and a delivery that misses its slot waits. 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 underside matters, because a hand goes under every edge.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Underfloor heating in a screed rules out fixing into the floor and rules out standing anything heavy on a single point. 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. The bases stay yours and only the surface changes.