Stone bar tops in Edgware

Yes. Edgware is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA8. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. 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 stone comes off last because it goes down last. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

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. 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 garage floor slopes and the frame takes that up. 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. 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.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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. Two people to a bar top, four where the nose is deep. 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 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 short unload is still a long fit on a bar.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop fabrication. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would 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. A late bar is a separate visit and the quote says so. 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. Nothing is assumed about a frame somebody else built.

A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. 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 radius on a walked-past corner is agreed at drawing stage. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. 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. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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. The corbel is on show, so it is chosen rather than supplied.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The boiler has usually been moved into the kitchen at some point, with its flue through the outer leaf and its pipework surface run to the nearest corner. 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. Where the weight lands is worked out before the piece is cut.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. 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. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. Permits are sorted before a corbel is drilled.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. 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. 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. A trade bar is carried in outside trading hours or not at all.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. 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. One level or two, and it is decided early.