Stone bar tops in Hainault

Yes. Hainault is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG6. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. 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 nose stays wrapped until the frame is ready for it. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The wall between the kitchen and the hall is load-bearing blockwork rather than a stud, so an opening through it is a lintel job and not an afternoon with a bolster. Rooms in this stock are compact, so a bar usually replaces a table rather than sitting alongside one, and it is drawn for two or three stools with enough floor left to get past them. Blockwork holds a fixing and plasterboard does not. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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 riser is boxed to a line the stone can follow.

A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. 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 waterfall end travels as its own piece and is bonded in place. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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. Fitting a bar top is slower than carrying one.

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 installation and worktop templating. 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. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. 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 late bar is a separate visit and the quote says so. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. 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.

Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. 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 bar on an end takes the corner load a wall used to take. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. Steel spans what a carcass cannot. Send a photograph of every corner of the room so we can see the boxings, the length you want, and how many stools you expect to use. Access is arranged through a managing agent or a scheme office rather than with the household directly, so a date gets confirmed once in writing and moving it costs a fortnight. 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. Sealing a bar top is a yearly job and we say so.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. The balcony door frequently opens off the kitchen, which puts a threshold, a draught and a well-used route through one end of the run. None of that stops a bar being fitted level, but it does mean the top is set to a datum of its own and packed off the frame rather than followed down to the floor. Support under the overhang comes first on the drawing.

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. Nothing is payable in advance of the template. The kitchen doorway is usually offset into a corner, so one leg of an L is short before anyone has designed anything. What carries a bar top here is rarely a kitchen carcass, so the framing underneath gets looked at before anything is measured across the top of it. A bar top is judged from a stool, not from the doorway.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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 bar top is set to one datum along its own length.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Whole streets went up to two or three plans, so the house next door has the same kitchen and forty years of extensions have made none of them measure the same. Space is tight, so a bar here tends to replace a table rather than sit alongside one, and the piece is drawn for two or three stools rather than a row of them. A trade bar and a home bar are different pieces of work.