Stone bar tops in Cockfosters

Yes. Cockfosters is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN4. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes 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. A suspension is booked for the fitting day, not the delivery hour. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Houses at the later end of this period went up in cavity rather than solid brick, so two that look identical from the road behave differently when a fixing goes in. These bars nearly always land at the open end of a knocked-through kitchen and dining room, which means the piece is read from both sides and both sides get the same edge treatment rather than one being left as a cut face. The apron is bonded on the bench, never built up in the room. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. Where the wall is bowed the rear rail takes it up.

A car will often hold more than its doors will admit, and it is the clear width between the door edges that a piece actually has to pass through. 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. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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. Bar tops are set once, so the day is planned to allow it.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop fabrication. 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. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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.

Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. 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. Support follows the seating plan along the whole nose. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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 bar pushed sideways was fixed to plasterboard. 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. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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. Who signs off the steel is settled before it is ordered.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. 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. 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. Every obstruction under the top is a seating decision too.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. There is a chimney breast on each flank wall, and the one in the kitchen carried a boiler flue rather than a fireplace, so the recess beside it is shallow. 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. Piece length is capped by the way in and the support follows.

Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. Where the bay is timed, the support goes in first.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. A top with a bonded apron on the front arrives deeper than a worktop and behaves like a beam, so there is no easing it round a turn at all. The bar top is the last piece in and the first one people touch.