Stone bar tops in Albany Park

Yes. Albany Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA5, DA14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. A bar fit runs longer than a worktop run, because the frame, the support and the stone are three stages and only the last of them is quick. Nothing is rushed off a tail lift onto an unsupported nose. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Ceiling heights are modest and the window over the sink is wide and low, which leaves a shallow band for tiling or an upstand. These bars nearly always land at the open end of a knocked-through kitchen and dining room, which means the piece is read from both sides and both sides get the same edge treatment rather than one being left as a cut face. Noggins first, brackets second, stone last. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. A bar top is levelled to itself rather than to what it stands on, so the packing goes into the frame and the stools take up whatever the floor is doing. Nothing under the nose is allowed to be in the way.

Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. That matters more on a bar than on a run, because a join forced by the way in cannot be allowed to land in the unsupported part of the nose. Where the route is tight the bar gains a join behind a corbel. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. That has to cover more than the unload, since the corbels, the flat bar and the fixings all come off the van well before the top does. Two trips to the van, one for hardware and one for stone.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. A bar is nearly always the last thing added to a project, so it is templated on a visit of its own once the joinery around it has stopped moving. A bar goes in last, so it is measured last. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Where the same detail is repeating across several rooms the support gets standardised once and then cut to length, which is cheaper than drawing it each time. What gets leaned on gets specified for leaning.

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 bar laid over that is a second level rather than a wider one, so it wants a spine underneath it and a settled detail where the two heights meet. A radius on a walked-past corner is agreed at drawing stage. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. Where the nose has to be carried past something fixed the support moves rather than the stone, since a corbel landing in the knee space is worse than no corbel at all. The back of a bar is seen, so the back is finished. Confirm the finished height you want and whether the bar is seen from both sides, and tell us who is building the frame and when it will be complete. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. A home bar is discretionary work, so the edge profile, the corbel detail and the radius on the nose are worth settling properly rather than defaulting to whatever is quickest. A bar outlasts whoever specified it.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Most have gained a rear extension or a lean-to, so the back door now opens into a utility rather than into the kitchen itself. The side passage is usually wide enough for a full length to reach the room, so piece length is decided by the slab and by what the frame will carry rather than by the front door. The riser gets notched around, not built away from.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. 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. The seating side is the part that decides the piece, because a stool at the open end puts a load on a corner that a wall would otherwise have been carrying. One level or two, and it is decided early.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Harder use and stronger cleaning products push the answer towards porcelain or sintered stone, because a resin-bound surface is the one that shows what has been left standing on it. Batch work still gets its own template per room.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. Anything that puts a notch in a bar takes material out of the piece at the point people lean on it, so the notch and the support are drawn together or not at all. Noggins go into a stud wall before a bar is fixed to it.