Stone bar tops in Hanwell

Yes. Hanwell is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W7. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than 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 suspension is booked for the fitting day, not the delivery hour. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

A soil stack is strapped to the outside of the addition wall and its branch comes through low, which settles where the sink can go before any layout is drawn. In a cellar the headroom fixes the counter height first and everything else works back from it, and the stair down is the tightest part of the route because stone carried downward is harder to control than stone carried up. The break sits over support and clear of every seat. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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. Steel spans what a carcass cannot.

A pendant light hanging in the middle of a hall ceiling sets the angle a piece can be tilted to, and it is the measurement nobody thinks to take. 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. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. Bar tops are set once, so the day is planned to allow it.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. One detail across several rooms keeps the fixings the same. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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.

A join in a long run wants to sit away from the rooflight, because a seam under direct downlight shows in a way the same seam under a wall cupboard never 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. Nothing sits over a join that somebody leans on. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. A bar top is set to one datum along its own length. Send the length you want, the number of stools, and photographs walking from the pavement through to the room, including the cellar stair if the bar is going down there. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. The wall between the original room and the return usually carries a steel, and the plaster line above it steps, so anything full height behind the run is measured separately from the top. The seating side is the part that decides the piece, because a stool at the open end puts a load on a corner that a wall would otherwise have been carrying. The overhang is drawn before the layout is signed off.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A single long run down one side puts every cut-out in one piece, so the sink, the hob and any drainer grooves all take material out of the same length. A separate bar in the same room still takes its services from the same run, so the waste, the socket and the water are set out with the kitchen even though the joinery is not. A bar top is a shape decision with steel attached to it.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. There is usually a step down into the back addition, so the kitchen floor and the hall floor are not the same level and neither of them is flat. 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. Nothing about a bar top is designed around a wall.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. 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. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. 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. The underside of the nose is polished because it is looked at.