Restaurant and cafe table tops in Cheapside

Yes. Cheapside is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2V. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. 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. 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 combination boiler hangs on whichever wall happened to be external, and that decision has already used up a stretch of the only wall the run wanted. 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 shopfront door is the only way in on most parades. Where the structure cannot be cut into, the stone is relieved instead, and a relief that deep changes both the yield off the slab and how the piece is handled. 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. Fixed seating fixes the dimension it faces.

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. 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 dozen pieces is a dozen carries, not one lift. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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 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. Shared-house kitchens take heavier use from more people than a family kitchen does, and the surface gets chosen on that basis rather than on looks. 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. One set of decisions, repeated across the whole room. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. 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. Buying twice costs more than buying deep once.

A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. 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 long communal piece is a slab-length question. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. 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. Overhang past the plate is where a table tips. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. Ten years of service is a different specification entirely.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. 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. Shapes are drawn rather than described.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. Radiators and rails cap the depth of a two-seat piece.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. Deliveries are timed to the room rather than to the day, so the unload lands between service or before the doors open. A suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. 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. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Bases go in first and tops go in last.