Stone bar tops in Brixton

Yes. Brixton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW9, SW2. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. 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. Where parking is tight the hardware walks in ahead of the stone. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The kitchen occupies the ground floor of the addition with a garden door at the far end, so there is a second way in that is narrower than the front door and a great deal shorter. A bar in one of these houses is either the end of a through-lounge or a cellar conversion, and the two behave differently. Old floors move, so the bar is fixed back as well as down. 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. 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 top will not correct a frame that is out of true.

Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. 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. Where the route is tight the bar gains a join behind a corbel. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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 steel is priced with the bar, not after it. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. Drinks left standing decide the material more than looks do.

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. 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 flush bar is one plane and twice the overhang problem. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

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. 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. Fixings go into timber that was put there for them. 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. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone 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. Porcelain forgives the cleaning products a bar actually meets.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. 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. The knee space is measured before the bracket is specified.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. 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. A polished front edge is protected from the tail lift to the frame.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. A counter fixed back to lightweight framing takes a sideways push as well as a downward load, and framing built for neither gets noggins let into it first. Where the wall is bowed the rear rail takes it up.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. 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.