Restaurant and cafe table tops in St James Street

Yes. St James Street is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E17. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Waltham Forest. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. 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 pavement stays walkable while the frames come off. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Ceilings in the principal rooms are three metres or more, so a full-height panel behind a hob is a taller piece here than the same kitchen would need anywhere else. 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. Covers decide the count, and the count decides the order. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the 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. Feet are wound out where the floor falls away.

A window sill or a radiator on the half-landing takes the corner out of the turn at precisely the point the piece needs that corner. 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 stack of tops is a weight before it is a delivery. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. The bases are the heavy half of the delivery, so the pallet is dealt with first while there are still hands free for it. One stop, and the count is proved before we leave.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. 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. Mixed sizes are fine; unplanned mixed sizes are not. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. The base carries the weight and the floor carries the base. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. 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. Ten years of service is a different specification entirely.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Carrying down a flight is not the easier direction, because the weight runs ahead of the crew and whoever is at the bottom has no way of stopping a slip. The bases go in first and are stood where they belong, so nothing heavy is dragged across a floor that has already been finished. Battens under anything that has to wait.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. Rounds waste the corners of their blank where squares do not, so the mix of shapes moves the slab count more than the number of covers does. What a counter leaves behind is worth designing for.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Nothing changes hands until after the template. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. What a table top needs from us is a size, a shape and the base plate it has to be drilled to, and very little else. Cut to your bases rather than to a size off a list.

Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. A short run of external steps before the communal door means a piece is lifted twice before the staircase proper has even started. What gets damaged on a route like that is a corner, and a table corner is polished, exposed and at precisely the height of a door frame. The way in is walked before the van doors open.