Restaurant and cafe table tops in Shadwell

Yes. Shadwell is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. 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. 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. A whole order comes off in one movement wherever it can. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Underfloor heating in the screed means nothing is fixed into the floor, so an island is anchored to the carcasses alone. 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. Old floors fall away and the feet take it up. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. 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. Radiators and rails cap the depth of a two-seat piece.

The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. 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. Each piece is checked off against the plan as it lands. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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 bases are the heavy pallet, not the tops.

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 design & quotation. 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. Extended households run kitchens hard, and that pushes the specification towards granite or sintered stone rather than a light quartz. 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. Repeat work is quoted against the original, not from scratch. Two households cooking in one kitchen means two of most things, and the run has to carry a second sink or a second oven without losing its working length. 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. Fit-out dates are worked backwards from the opening.

Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. 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. Colour is matched across the room, not table by table. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. 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. An awkward corner takes a made shape. 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. Where the provider has set the specification the material choice was made once for a great many kitchens, and the useful work is meeting it exactly rather than proposing something else on the day. 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. Written approval before cutting, every time.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The lift car, the loading bay and the building manager decide the piece sizes here, not the slab. 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.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Nothing is carried past a chair still in the gangway.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Ceiling heights are held to the minimum the plan allows, so the panel between worktop and wall units is a short piece. The complication is the programme rather than the building. What the unit was before decides what it needs now.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. 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. Feet are wound out where the floor falls away.