Restaurant and cafe table tops in St Paul's

Yes. St Paul's is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC4M. 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 bases are the heavy pallet, not the tops. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or 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. Frontage, gangway and covers, in that order. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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.

Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. 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. Packaging goes back on the van rather than into the yard. 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. Somewhere to stand the frames matters more than the distance.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. 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. Orders are counted in pieces and never in metres. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. 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. Ordered as a set, so the set matches.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. 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. Mixed sizes are fine; unplanned mixed sizes are not. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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 fit-out drawing with final table positions and sizes, the base specification, and the delivery window the managing agent is prepared to accept. Nobody reseals a worktop annually in a let property, so a material that depends on being resealed is the wrong specification however well it photographs. 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. Loose furniture rather than a landlord fixture.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. Fixed seating sets the dimension it faces, so a piece against a bench is drawn to the bench instead of to a standard size. A shallow room decides the diameter early.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Underfloor heating in a screed rules out fixing into the floor and rules out standing anything heavy on a single point. 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. Priced per piece, with the shape written against each one.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. Where a servery run forces a join, the tables never carry one, because a table top is a single piece of stone or it is not a table top. The largest blank is nested first and the rest around it.