Stone bar tops in Enfield Wash

Yes. Enfield Wash is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN3. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Enfield. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The kitchen is at the front or the back depending on the plan, and which it is decides whether there is a rear door on the route at all. A bar in this stock is nearly always a short breakfast counter on the end of a run, and the end is exactly the point where the load lands with the least underneath it. Blockwork holds a fixing and plasterboard does not. 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. 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. The back of a bar is seen, so the back is finished.

Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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. A short unload is still a long fit on a bar.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. The overhang is checked against the frame that exists.

A U shape uses more linear metres than people expect, and the two returns rarely nest together, so a second slab is a genuine possibility. 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. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. Noggins go into a stud wall before a bar is fixed to it. Tell us what the end of the run is built off, send the length and projection you want, and confirm whether there is rear access into the kitchen. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. 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 same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Units are often only 500mm deep, so a standard 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors need checking against it. 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. What holds the front edge up matters more than what the slab cost.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. With three walls in play the chance of one of them being out of square is high, and the template has to carry all three angles. 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 radius on a walked-past corner is agreed at drawing stage.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. 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. The drip tray and the bar sink arrive with the top, not after it.

Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. 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. The support has to be specified to whoever is building the frame before it is boarded up, since steel let in afterwards means taking the front of the bar apart again. A bar in constant use is a maintenance decision as well.