Stone bar tops in Elm Park

Yes. Elm Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM12. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Most have gained a rear extension or a lean-to, so the back door now opens into a utility rather than into the kitchen itself. 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. Where the walls give nothing, the bar stands on its own. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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.

Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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 trade bar is carried in outside trading hours or not at all. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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 to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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 doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. 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.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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. 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. 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.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. The plaster is a thick float and set over brick that has blown in patches, so a wall sounds solid in one place and hollow a hand-span away. 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. Where the weight lands is worked out before the piece is cut.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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 drip tray and the bar sink arrive with the top, not after it.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. 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.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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.