Stone bar tops in Greenwich Peninsula

Yes. Greenwich Peninsula is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE10. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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. Packaging and offcuts go back the way the top came in. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Poured screed over steel decking can fall away across a long run, so level is checked across the whole room before anything is packed. This is the stock where a bar is most often a working one, with a glasswasher, a waste, a drip tray and beer lines all needing to be planned under the top before the piece is drawn. A cellar bar is set to the headroom first. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. 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 sloping floor is a problem for the stools, not the top.

A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. 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. Two people to a bar top, four where the nose is deep. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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. One van, one bar, one visit.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Replacing one plot years after handover is the problem nobody plans for, because a quartz colour can be reordered and a granite block cannot. 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 evening use is what the piece is sized for. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn run. 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. Bars are quoted as their own item, never as extra metreage.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. 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 breakfast counter and a trade bar are not the same brief. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

A downstand over a run caps wall unit height before it caps anything else, and the splashback then takes its height from the steel rather than from the units. 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. What the bar wraps around is templated, never assumed square. Send the bar layout with the glasswasher, sink and waste positions marked, and tell us the route from where a van can stand to the room. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. Where the person choosing it is not the person who will lean on it, the seating height is set to a standard rather than to whoever happens to be standing in the room. The overhang is signed off by whoever pays for the steel.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Ceilings are high and there are usually no wall units, so a splashback runs to whatever height is decided rather than to a cupboard. This is the stock where a bar is most often a working one, with a glasswasher, a drip tray and beer lines under it rather than a place to put a laptop. Old floors move, so the bar is fixed back as well as down.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. 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. A trade bar is carried in outside trading hours or not at all.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Open plan means long uninterrupted runs and an island in the middle of the room with every edge on show. 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 overhang decides the bar, and the bar decides the stone.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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 raised tier is a second piece, priced and drawn as one.