Stone bar tops in Barons Court

Yes. Barons Court is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Visitor permits are issued to the household rather than to the trade, so the ones the day needs come from the customer and are best in hand the week before. 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. Steel and corbels are unloaded before the stone is. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

These kitchens are full of boxed soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing usually stops short of the ceiling. A bar in one of these flats is generally furniture in a reception room rather than part of a kitchen, so it is drawn alongside the skirting and the cornice and built as joinery with the stone as its final element. Deep skirtings push the frame forward and the top covers it. 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. 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. Where the wall is bowed the rear rail takes it up.

Timber nosings chip under a slipped edge, so the treads are covered along the whole flight rather than only at the landings. 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 frame is built in the room; only the top has to travel. A bay suspension carries a fee and a notice period, and the notice period is the part that catches people out when a date moves. 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. The bar top waits on the van until the frame is level.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. 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 serving counter and a bar are one piece under two loads. 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 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. The steel is priced with the bar, not after it.

A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. 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. One level or two, and it is decided early. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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. 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 bar pushed sideways was fixed to plasterboard. Confirm the working hours the block allows and the lift booking, and send the frame drawing with the finished height and the projection marked on it. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. 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.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. These kitchens were service rooms once, so they are long, narrow and further from the entrance than the floor plan suggests. 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. Drinks stand on it for hours, which changes the material answer.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. 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. A breakfast counter and a trade bar are not the same brief.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. 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. A raised tier is a second piece, priced and drawn as one.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full flight. 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. Cellar bars go down a flight, which is the harder direction.