Stone bar tops in Downham

Yes. Downham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR1, SE6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. 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. Where the bay is timed, the support goes in first. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The under-stair cupboard opens off the kitchen in most of them, and its door swing is the reason a corner run stops where it does. 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. A cellar bar is set to the headroom first. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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. A bar top will not correct a frame that is out of true.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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 waterfall end travels as its own piece and is bonded in place. 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. The stone comes off last because it goes down last.

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 installation 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Where the use is hard, the surface is chosen for it. 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. 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 late bar is a separate visit and the quote says so.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. 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 bar top is a shape decision with steel attached to it. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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. Fixings go into timber that was put there for them. 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. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. Where the person choosing it is not the person who will lean on it, the seating height is set to a standard rather than to whoever happens to be standing in the room. A home bar is chosen once, so the detail earns the conversation.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. 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. Where the two levels meet is a detail, not an afterthought.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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. Suction pads go on the polished face, never on the nose.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. 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. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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. The knee space is measured before the bracket is specified.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. The chimney breast served a back boiler and is usually still standing, so there is a shallow recess on one side of the room. 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. Old floors move, so the bar is fixed back as well as down.