Stone bar tops in Bakers Arms

Yes. Bakers Arms is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E10, E17. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Waltham Forest. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. One van, one bar, one visit. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Working hours are constrained by the business underneath, so noisy work has a window rather than a day. 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. Beer lines and a glasswasher change what goes under the top. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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. A sloping floor is a problem for the stools, not the top.

Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. 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. A bonded apron makes the piece deeper than the doorway expects. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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. Where parking is tight the hardware walks in ahead of the 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 templating 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. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. 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. The brief changes, but the nose still has to be carried. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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. Where the use is hard, the surface is chosen for it.

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. 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. 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.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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 the bar wraps around is templated, never assumed square. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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. The radius on the nose is a decision, not a default.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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.

Nothing is payable in advance of the template. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Plaster over blockwork is thin and hollow in patches, so anything fixed back to the wall needs a sound spot found first. 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.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The kitchen is usually at the back over the rear of the shop, which makes it the furthest point from the street door. Partitions are frequently lightweight, so anything fixed back to a wall gets noggins let into the framing before a bracket is offered up to it, and a fixing into plasterboard alone is not an option on a piece people push against. The break sits over support and clear of every seat.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. 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. 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. An overhang on two sides is two separate calculations.