Stone bar tops in Church Street

Yes. Church Street is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW8, W2. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. An event-day suspension can override a bay that is perfectly usable the rest of the week, so a booked space gets checked again nearer the time. 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 bar top waits on the van until the frame is level. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The landing serves two or three front doors that open outward onto it, so the space to turn a piece at the top of the flight is not entirely yours to use. 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 apron is bonded on the bench, never built up in the room. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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 riser is boxed to a line the stone can follow.

A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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. Nothing is leaned on a stud wall while it waits to be fitted. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. 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 licensed room sets the hours and the parking has to agree.

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 installation and worktop templating. 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. 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. Repeat detail, single survey, matched batch. 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. The brief changes, but the nose still has to be carried.

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. What the shape gives in length it takes back in support. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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. Steel spans what a carcass cannot. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. Porcelain forgives the cleaning products a bar actually meets.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. 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. A bar top is set to one datum along its own length.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Textured ceiling coatings and old floor tiles in this stock predate 2000, so nothing is scraped, sanded or lifted before anyone knows what it is. 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. Elbows and glasses, not knives and pans.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. Streets near a ground or a venue have restrictions that come and go with the fixture list rather than with the time of day. 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. Nothing is rushed off a tail lift onto an unsupported nose.

How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. 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. The support has to be specified to whoever is building the frame before it is boarded up, since steel let in afterwards means taking the front of the bar apart again. Where the use is hard, the surface is chosen for it.