Stone bar tops in Cudham

Yes. Cudham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TN14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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 licensed room sets the hours and the parking has to agree. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These have been added to over two centuries, so the kitchen is made of two or three walls of different ages and different thicknesses. Lengths run past what a single slab gives, so a break is designed in from the start, placed over support and kept clear of every stool position before anything is nested. Two tiers where a single piece will not reach. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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. Nothing under the nose is allowed to be in the way.

The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. 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. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. Nothing is rushed off a tail lift onto an unsupported nose.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop templating. 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 converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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 evening use is what the piece is sized for. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. 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. Bars are quoted as their own item, never as extra metreage.

Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. 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. An overhang on two sides is two separate calculations. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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 back of a bar is seen, so the back is finished. Send the bar layout with the rear counter and any sink marked, the seating side and stool count, and the edge profile you want on the front. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. A lantern or a rooflight over the room throws raking light across every horizontal surface, which shows a lipped join from the far side of the kitchen. 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 underside of the nose is polished because it is looked at.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Windows are small and set deep, which leaves the run under them dark and the reveal too deep for a plain square end. Bars in these houses run long enough to need a break, so it is placed over support and clear of every stool position before anything is nested. Scribed at the back and free at the front.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. 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. The bar is set out from the seat and worked back to the units.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. The seating side is the part that decides the piece, because a stool at the open end puts a load on a corner that a wall would otherwise have been carrying. A foot rail is planned with the frame, not bolted on later.