Stone bar tops in Bulls Cross

Yes. Bulls Cross is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN1, EN2. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Enfield. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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 fit is a day, not a drop. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The original larder or store cupboard usually survives in a corner, and that alcove is deeper than the units and squarer than the walls around it. In a cellar the headroom fixes the counter height first and everything else works back from it, and the stair down is the tightest part of the route because stone carried downward is harder to control than stone carried up. Two tiers where a single piece will not reach. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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. The bar is packed level off the frame, not off the floor.

Whether the kitchen sits straight ahead or off a turn at the end of the hall changes the maximum piece far more than the hall width does. 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. Two people to a bar top, four where the nose is deep. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. Steel and corbels are unloaded before the stone is.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Drinks left standing decide the material more than looks do. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. A bar is the piece most likely to be added after the kitchen.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. 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 foot rail is planned with the frame, not bolted on later. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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. A notch in a bar top is drawn with its support beside it. 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. A chipped front edge can be dressed in place.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. 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. What the shape gives in length it takes back in support.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. The bar top waits on the van until the frame is level.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. A separate bar in the same room still takes its services from the same run, so the waste, the socket and the water are set out with the kitchen even though the joinery is not. The nose line is drawn first and everything works back from it.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Suspended timber floors flex underfoot, and anything that moves beneath a unit shows up later as a lipped join. 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. The overhang decides the bar, and the bar decides the stone.