Restaurant and cafe table tops in Queenhithe

Yes. Queenhithe is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC4V, EC4R. 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. The bay is booked against the fitting date, not the week. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Floor-to-ceiling glazing lights the worktop from one side all day, which shows every ripple in a polished surface and every gap at a scribe. The complication is the programme rather than the building. Flats above set the hours the work can happen in. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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.

Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. 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 trolley run across a forecourt gets boarded like any other. 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. The unload is timed between service, never through it.

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 installation. 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. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. 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 specification repeated across several plots has to be repeatable, which quietly rules out the natural stones where no two slabs match. 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.

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. 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. Squares off one slab and rounds off another, where that is cheaper. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. 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.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. 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. Every dimension quoted is a finished dimension.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. 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 whole order comes off in one movement wherever it can.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Riser panels, wall boxes and the boiler cupboard sit in fixed positions the developer will not move for a worktop. 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. Twenty tops that match, not twenty that nearly do.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. 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. Each piece is checked off against the plan as it lands.