Stone bar tops in Bayswater

Yes. Bayswater is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W2. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. What comes off the van first is whatever holds the top up. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Cornice runs round the head of the wall, so the wall units stop under it and the splashback band is trapped between two things that are not going to move. A bar in a house of this age is usually either the end of a through-lounge or a cellar conversion, and the cellar is the harder of the two because the headroom fixes the counter height before anybody else gets a say. A bar in a small room is drawn for the stools it will take. 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.

Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying it. 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. The frame is built in the room; only the top has to travel. 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. The van stands for the frame as well as the top.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. 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. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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 managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. 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. Drinks left standing decide the material more than looks do.

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. 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 breakfast counter and a trade bar are not the same brief. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

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. Send the length you want, the number of stools, and photographs walking from the pavement through to the room, including the cellar stair if the bar is going down there. Access in a tenanted flat depends on the tenant, so the template and fitting dates are agreed with whoever actually holds the keys. Where the person choosing it is not the person who will lean on it, the seating height is set to a standard rather than to whoever happens to be standing in the room. A chipped front edge can be dressed in place.

The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A communal flight is out of use while a piece is on it, so the carry is timed so nobody is trying to pass on a half-landing. 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. Cellar bars go down a flight, which is the harder direction.

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. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. There is nothing to pay before the template visit. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. 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. People push against the front edge, so the front edge gets the steel.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. A bar top will not correct a frame that is out of true.

A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. 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.