Stone bar tops in Fulham Reach

Yes. Fulham Reach is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. 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 frame is checked before anything comes off the van. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Piece size is set by the lift car and the entrance dogleg, which routinely turns a two-piece kitchen into a three-piece one. What is called a bar in a flat like this is usually the end of a peninsula with stools pushed under it, and the projection was drawn on the layout long before anybody worked out what would carry it. Piece length is capped by the way in and the support follows. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. 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 pushed sideways was fixed to plasterboard.

Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. 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 nose is the corner that gets caught, so it travels padded. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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 red route buys minutes and a bar top needs hours.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating 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. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. 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 bar in constant use is a maintenance decision as well. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. 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. One detail across several rooms keeps the fixings the same.

A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. 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 is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. 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. Every obstruction under the top is a seating decision too. Send the peninsula dimensions including how far the top is meant to project, the stool count, and the internal dimensions of the service lift. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. 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 overhang is signed off by whoever pays for the steel.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The lift car, the loading bay and the building manager decide the piece sizes here, not the slab. 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. Support under the overhang comes first on the drawing.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Dot-and-dab plasterboard bellies at a taped internal angle, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. The carcasses are thin cam-lock boxes that will not take a leaning load on their own, so flat steel is let into them flush with the top of the frame before any stone goes on, rather than corbels being screwed to the front afterwards. A garage floor slopes and the frame takes that up.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. Packaging and offcuts go back the way the top came in.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. 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. What the shape gives in length it takes back in support.