Stone bar tops in Castle Green

Yes. Castle Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM9, IG11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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 offcut from a bar sink leaves in the van. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. The side passage is usually wide enough for a full length to reach the room, so piece length is decided by the slab and by what the frame will carry rather than by the front door. The frame is built to the room and the stone answers to the frame. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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 notch in a bar top is drawn with its support beside it.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. 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. Piece length is capped by the turn, then the support is drawn to suit. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. 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 suspension is booked for the fitting day, not the delivery hour.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. 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. A bar is the piece most likely to be added after the kitchen. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. Frames get opened up again when the support was left out.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through 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. A foot rail is planned with the frame, not bolted on later. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

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. 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. Leaning is a sideways load and framing has to answer for it. Confirm the finished height you want and whether the bar is seen from both sides, and tell us who is building the frame and when it will be complete. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. 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 support is specified for the next occupant as well.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. The under-stair cupboard opens off the kitchen in most of them, and its door swing is the reason a corner run stops where it does. The side passage means a full length can generally reach the room whole, so the break count answers to the slab and to the frame rather than to the front door. A cellar bar is set to the headroom first.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. 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. 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. Nothing under the nose is allowed to be in the way.

The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. Two people to a bar top, four where the nose is deep.