Stone bar tops in Frognal

Yes. Frognal is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW3. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

The original fitted dresser and the vent to outside air have often left their openings behind the units, unfilled and unrecorded. A bar in one of these flats is generally furniture in a reception room rather than part of a kitchen, so it is drawn alongside the skirting and the cornice and built as joinery with the stone as its final element. Beer lines and a glasswasher change what goes under the top. 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. Noggins go into a stud wall before a bar is fixed to it.

The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. 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. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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. 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 design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. 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. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. 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. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. 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 overhang is checked against the frame that exists.

Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. 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 foot rail is planned with the frame, not bolted on later. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

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. 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. Confirm the working hours the block allows and the lift booking, and send the frame drawing with the finished height and the projection marked on it. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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. What stays with the building is built to stay.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. 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. 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. What the bar wraps around is templated, never assumed square.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. 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. Stools and back shelving come in after the stone is down.

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 carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. The nose stays wrapped until the frame is ready for it.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Thick external walls, deep window reveals and boxed risers mean the runs are templated to what is there rather than to a rectangle. 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 underside of the nose is polished because it is looked at.