Stone bar tops in Feltham

Yes. Feltham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW13, TW14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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. A short unload is still a long fit on a bar. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen sits at the rear with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the useful run is broken into two short lengths. 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. Old floors move, so the bar is fixed back as well as down. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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.

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. 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 route is measured to the deepest part of the piece. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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. Permits are sorted before a corbel is drilled.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. 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. 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. 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. Nothing is assumed about a frame somebody else built. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. 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. One level or two, and it is decided early. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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. 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 householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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. A bar in constant hands wants a finish that does not mark.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. Where the counter runs flush with the working surface instead of standing above it the whole thing becomes one plane, which looks better and doubles the unsupported span. A breakfast counter and a trade bar are not the same brief.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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. A sloping floor is a problem for the stools, not the top.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. A shallow bay or a squared-off rear window means the run beneath it is rarely the same depth at both ends. 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. The nose is designed before the colour is.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. The side passage means a full length can generally reach the room whole, so the break count answers to the slab and to the frame rather than to the front door. Blockwork holds a fixing and plasterboard does not.