Stone bar tops in Ashburton

Yes. Ashburton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The chimney breast served a back boiler and is usually still standing, so there is a shallow recess on one side of the room. 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. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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. What carries the overhang is fixed to structure, not to lining.

The hall is the only way in and out for whoever lives there, so it is cleared and then kept clear for as long as pieces are moving. 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. Nothing is leaned on a stud wall while it waits to be fitted. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. 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.

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 splashbacks & upstands. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. What gets leaned on gets specified for leaning. 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. 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. Batch work still gets its own template per room.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. 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 two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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. A corbel never lands where a knee goes. 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. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. 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 chipped front edge can be dressed in place.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Where the turn inside is tight the piece gets turned on the path and brought in already on edge, which needs room in front of the door as well as behind it. The steel and the corbels travel that same route and go in first, so a bar is three separate carries into one room rather than a single delivery. The bar top is the last piece in and the first one people touch.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. A top with a bonded apron on the front arrives deeper than a worktop and behaves like a beam, so there is no easing it round a turn at all. Piece length is capped by the turn, then the support is drawn to suit.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. 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.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. An inter-war terrace is wider than a Victorian one and shallower than a semi, so the kitchen is a compact square room rather than a galley. 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. Two tiers where a single piece will not reach.