Stone bar tops in Canada Water

Yes. Canada Water is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE16. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. 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. One van, one bar, one visit. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The kitchen and the dining space share one room front to back, with the stair enclosure taking a bite out of one side of it. What is called a bar in a flat like this is usually the end of a peninsula with stools pushed under it, and the projection was drawn on the layout long before anybody worked out what would carry it. The stone is the last element of the joinery, not the first. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. Anything that flexes under the nose shows up at the join.

Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. 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. Cellar bars go down a flight, which is the harder direction. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. 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. Where parking is tight the hardware walks in ahead of the stone.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. What gets leaned on gets specified for leaning. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Batch work still gets its own template per room.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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 column in the middle of a bar is a decision, not a surprise. Send the peninsula dimensions including how far the top is meant to project, the stool count, and the internal dimensions of the service lift. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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. The front edge takes the wear, whoever is leaning on it.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. 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. 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. A serving counter and a bar are one piece under two loads.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Windows are small and set to suit the elevation rather than the room, so most of the wall above the worktop is solid. The carcasses are thin cam-lock boxes that will not take a leaning load on their own, so flat steel is let into them flush with the top of the frame before any stone goes on, rather than corbels being screwed to the front afterwards. The frame is built to the room and the stone answers to the frame.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. 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. A bar top left on a pavement is a bar top with a chipped nose.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. 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. 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 stone is cut to the obstruction as found.