Stone bar tops in Canary Wharf

Yes. Canary Wharf is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. 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 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 stone comes off last because it goes down last. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

A tower block runs one or two lifts for many floors, so a lift out of service postpones a job rather than making it harder. Rooms in this stock are compact, so a bar usually replaces a table rather than sitting alongside one, and it is drawn for two or three stools with enough floor left to get past them. The stone is the last element of the joinery, not the first. 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. 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. Fixings go into timber that was put there for them.

Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. 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. A polished front edge is protected from the tail lift to the frame. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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 short unload is still a long fit on a bar.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop fabrication. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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 bar is the piece most likely to be added after the kitchen. 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. 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. Frames get opened up again when the support was left out.

Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. 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 length answers to the seats, not to the wall behind it. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

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. The knee space is measured before the bracket is specified. Send a photograph of every corner of the room so we can see the boxings, the length you want, and how many stools you expect to use. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. 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. The support is specified for the next occupant as well.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. Permits are sorted before a corbel is drilled.

Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. 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. 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. Where the wall is bowed the rear rail takes it up.

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. The carry is the constraint: a single stair with tight half-landings, or deck access with a long walk from the lift. None of that stops a bar being fitted level, but it does mean the top is set to a datum of its own and packed off the frame rather than followed down to the floor. What the frame does under the stone is half the job.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Handrails, mirrors and a sloping ceiling panel all eat into the usable diagonal, and none of them appear on a lift specification sheet. 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. Nothing is leaned on a stud wall while it waits to be fitted.