Stone bar tops in Catford

Yes. Catford is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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. A short unload is still a long fit on a bar. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The flat entrance door and the internal doorways are usually tighter than the communal stairs, which is the opposite of what most people assume. 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. The back of a freestanding bar is finished like the front. 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. 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.

Suction lifters earn their keep on a straight flight and become a liability on a winder, where a handle standing out from the face is one more thing to catch on a wall. 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. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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. Permits are sorted before a corbel is drilled.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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 overhang is checked against the frame that exists. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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 in constant use is a maintenance decision as well.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. 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. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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 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. Managed stock usually comes with its own rules about working hours, waste, and who is allowed on site. 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 home bar is chosen once, so the detail earns the conversation.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Timber nosings chip under a slipped edge, so the treads are covered along the whole flight rather than only at the landings. 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.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. The nose stays wrapped until the frame is ready for it.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. 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. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. Where the wall is bowed the rear rail takes it up.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Cornice, picture rails and deep skirting survive in converted rooms, so the run stands off the wall and the back edge follows the units rather than the plaster. A bar in a house of this age is usually either the end of a through-lounge or a cellar conversion, and the cellar is the harder of the two because the headroom fixes the counter height before anybody else gets a say. Where the walls give nothing, the bar stands on its own.