Stone bar tops in Aldborough Hatch

Yes. Aldborough Hatch is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG2. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. Where parking is tight the hardware walks in ahead of the stone. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Walls look modern and are not: block or breeze with a skim that has been patched over decades, so dry-laying and scribing still apply. A bar in this stock is nearly always a short breakfast counter on the end of a run, and the end is exactly the point where the load lands with the least underneath it. What the room will take decides the stool count. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. On a bar that counts twice over, because the same obstruction has to be cleared by the stone above it and by the knees of whoever is sitting at it. What the bar wraps around is templated, never assumed square.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. 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. A bar top left on a pavement is a bar top with a chipped nose.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. 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. 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. 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. 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.

A U shape uses more linear metres than people expect, and the two returns rarely nest together, so a second slab is a genuine possibility. 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. Support follows the seating plan along the whole nose. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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 support plan is drawn at the same time as the cut-out. Tell us what the end of the run is built off, send the length and projection you want, and confirm whether there is rear access into the kitchen. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. 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. Fixings into structure are agreed before they are drilled.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. With three walls in play the chance of one of them being out of square is high, and the template has to carry all three angles. Where the counter runs flush with the working surface instead of standing above it the whole thing becomes one plane, which looks better and doubles the unsupported span. An overhang on two sides is two separate calculations.

Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. There is nothing to pay before the template visit. Floors have usually settled towards the rear, so levelling means packing the units before the stone beds down. A bar top put into a room like that is an overhang question first, because the nose has to carry people leaning on it long after the slab has stopped being interesting. What the frame does under the stone is half the job.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. The advantage of a U is that every join can be put over a gable in a corner, so nothing lands in the middle of a clear length. 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. The bar is set out from the seat and worked back to the units.

The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. A trade bar is fitted around opening times, so the window the van has and the window the room has are rarely the same window. What comes off the van first is whatever holds the top up.