Restaurant and cafe table tops in Shoreditch

Yes. Shoreditch is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2A, E1, E2. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The goods lift is generous and the flat entrance often is not, so the tightest point on the route is inside the flat rather than in the building. These units are large and open, which is where the long communal table shows up, and a piece longer than a slab is a decision rather than a detail: either two tops meeting over a central leg, or a single piece in a material that comes in a longer sheet. Converted houses mean several sizes, not one. 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. 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. Room by room, since no two of them are the same.

Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. 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. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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. Turnover between operators rarely changes the pedestals. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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. Match it now or hunt for it later.

A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. 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. Colour is matched across the room, not table by table. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Exposed structure means the back edge is not a straight line at all, and a scribe of fifteen or twenty millimetres across a run is normal. 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. Nothing is scribed, because nothing meets a wall. Give us the communal table length and the base positions along it, and confirm the goods lift dimensions so the frames can be sized to the car. Planned programmes run several kitchens in sequence, so template, fabrication and fitting move as a rolling operation and one uncollected key holds up more than one flat. 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.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. 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. Nothing is carried past a chair still in the gangway.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Poured screed over steel decking can fall away across a long run, so level is checked across the whole room before anything is packed. The delivery is straightforward by comparison, since a goods lift and a loading door will take a full frame and a whole floor can be staged in one movement. A loading bay is the easiest delivery there is.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. 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. Veining is laid out so no two pieces read as a pair.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Ceilings are high and there are usually no wall units, so a splashback runs to whatever height is decided rather than to a cupboard. A goods lift and a loading door make a big delivery straightforward, so a whole floor can be staged in one movement. The room is handed back laid up, whatever the building.