Stone bar tops in East Dulwich

Yes. East Dulwich is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE22. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. 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. Trestles outside beat balancing a top on a half-built frame. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

A soil stack is strapped to the outside of the addition wall and its branch comes through low, which settles where the sink can go before any layout is drawn. A bar in one of these houses is either the end of a through-lounge or a cellar conversion, and the two behave differently. A garage floor slopes and the frame takes that up. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. 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.

A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full flight. 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. The frame goes up first so the top has somewhere to land. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. 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 offcut from a bar sink leaves in the van.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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. 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. 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. A serving counter and a bar are one piece under two loads. 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. 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 steel is priced with the bar, not after it.

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. The nose line is drawn first and everything works back from it. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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. The knee space is measured before the bracket is specified. Send the length you want, the number of stools, and photographs walking from the pavement through to the room, including the cellar stair if the bar is going down there. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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. The specification answers to the use, not to the brochure.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. The original scullery gully is still live in the yard outside the back door, and new waste from the sink joins a drain laid for a copper and a stone sink. In a cellar the headroom fixes the counter height first and everything else works back from it, and the stair down is the tightest part of the route because stone carried downward is harder to control than stone carried up. Deep skirtings push the frame forward and the top covers it.

Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The rear wall of the addition carries both the back door and the window, which leaves very little unbroken wall for a run to sit against. 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. A bar top is fitted last and touched first.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. 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 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. 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. Where the wall is bowed the rear rail takes it up.

Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Lower ground floor kitchens are reached by a stair with a winder in it, and the head height over that winder is lower than the room at either end. 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. The stone follows the frame, and the frame follows the stools.