Restaurant and cafe table tops in Dalston

Yes. Dalston is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E8. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. 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 suspension costs less than a lost fit-out morning. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The chimney breast is usually still standing with the opening blocked up, and the alcoves either side of it are rarely the same width as each other. 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. Small rooms want small pieces and steady bases. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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.

Every flight adds a set of handling movements, and handling is where stone gets damaged, so a fourth-floor walk-up is priced by the flight rather than by the metre. 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 single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. Pieces are staged inside before the van is moved off.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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. Lead time is the reason the date is set early. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. 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. A breakage next winter is a phone call, not a problem.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. 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. What a counter leaves behind is worth designing for. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

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. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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. What moves out with you is worth choosing well.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. 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. 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.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. A top-floor conversion puts part of the kitchen under the slope of the roof, so the wall behind the run stops at head height along one side of the room. 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. Communal lengths belong in the larger units.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Where the walls have been dry-lined over the old lath there is a void behind the board and no solid fixing until a batten is found. 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. Made to the plate you own, so nothing else has to be replaced.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. The flat below hears the floor more than the walls, so lifting boards to move a waste run is a conversation with a neighbour before it is a morning of work. Covers are won by inches in a room this narrow, so the gangway decides the table size long before anybody chooses a colour. A basement is for prep and not for storing stone.