Stone bar tops in Crayford

Yes. Crayford is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Poured screed over steel decking can fall away across a long run, so level is checked across the whole room before anything is packed. This is the stock where a bar is most often a working one, with a glasswasher, a waste, a drip tray and beer lines all needing to be planned under the top before the piece is drawn. Noggins first, brackets second, stone last. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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 knee space is measured before the bracket is specified.

Concierge buildings want the goods entrance, a booked lift and proof of insurance, all of which is straightforward when it is asked for a week out. 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 about a front edge survives being dragged. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. A licensed room sets the hours and the parking has to agree.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop fabrication. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here 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. The brief changes, but the nose still has to be carried. 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. Where the use is hard, the surface is chosen for it.

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. 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 seating side decides the piece; the wall side never does. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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. Send the bar layout with the glasswasher, sink and waste positions marked, and tell us the route from where a van can stand to the room. 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 bar in constant hands wants a finish that does not mark.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Open plan means long uninterrupted runs and an island in the middle of the room with every edge on show. A bar top put into a room like that is an overhang question first, because the nose has to carry people leaning on it long after the slab has stopped being interesting. The bar is set level to itself and packed off the frame.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. 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. Two heights means two edge profiles and a spine between them.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. A bar pushed sideways was fixed to plasterboard.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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 corbels go in before the top does, and both use the same door.