Restaurant and cafe table tops in Barbican

Yes. Barbican is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2Y. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. 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. Delivery is booked to the room, not to a half day. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The window sits in the middle of the run over the sink, and its board and cill set the limit on how tall an upstand can be. Trade in this stock is a single shopfront with a small room behind it, so an order is a dozen pieces rather than fifty, and that changes what is worth doing rather than how it is done. Converted houses mean several sizes, not one. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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. Uneven flags outside are why outdoor feet adjust.

Handrails, mirrors and a sloping ceiling panel all eat into the usable diagonal, and none of them appear on a lift specification sheet. 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. A lift takes a loaded frame or it takes nothing. 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. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. Empty frames go back on the van the same trip.

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 templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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. Volume moves the price per piece, and it should.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. 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 seating plan is priced as a list of pieces. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. The clearance under a fixed shelf is measured, not assumed. Bring in one base, or send the maker’s plate drawing, and tell us the table count including any spares you want to hold back. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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. Whoever signs off is agreed before machining starts.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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. A suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Doorways are 762mm at best, and the turn from the hall into the kitchen is the pinch point rather than the front door. 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.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. 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. Sizes settle the yield before the shape does.

An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. A whole slab still gets reserved, because a dozen matching tops is the entire point of ordering them together. A loading bay is the easiest delivery there is.