Stone bar tops in Bowes Park

Yes. Bowes Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N22, N13, N11. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Enfield. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. 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. The bar top waits on the van until the frame is level. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The stairs come down against the wall the addition opens off, so the doorway into the kitchen is offset and the corner beside it is taken by the cupboard under the flight. A bar in one of these houses is either the end of a through-lounge or a cellar conversion, and the two behave differently. Where the walls give nothing, the bar stands on its own. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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 bar pushed sideways was fixed to plasterboard.

A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of 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. Front tier and back tier are carried and set as two pieces. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. 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 licensed room sets the hours and the parking has to agree.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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 late bar is a separate visit and the quote says so. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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. Nothing is assumed about a frame somebody else built.

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. 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. The bar is set out from the seat and worked back to the units. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

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. Every obstruction under the top is a seating decision too. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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. Seating height is set to a person or to a standard, and stated.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. 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. Stool height and knee room are settled on the drawing.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. 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. Nothing is rushed off a tail lift onto an unsupported nose.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past 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. A foot rail is planned with the frame, not bolted on later.

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. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Open-tread and cantilevered stairs give nothing to lean a piece against, so the whole weight stays on the crew for the full length of the flight. 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. Where the route is tight the bar gains a join behind a corbel.