Stone bar tops in Hanworth

Yes. Hanworth is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW13. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

There is usually a shared rear alley, and whether the gate onto it is unlocked decides whether long pieces come in from the back. These bars nearly always land at the open end of a knocked-through kitchen and dining room, which means the piece is read from both sides and both sides get the same edge treatment rather than one being left as a cut face. Where the walls give nothing, the bar stands on its own. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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 corbel never lands where a knee goes.

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. A bar top is heavier than it looks because the apron is solid. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. 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. The frame is checked before anything comes off the van.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone 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. The evening use is what the piece is sized for. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Bars are quoted as their own item, never as extra metreage.

Three runs means two internal corners, and each corner is a decision about mitre or butt joint before anything is nested. 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 raised tier is a second piece, priced and drawn as one. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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. The bar is packed level off the frame, not off the floor. Confirm the finished height you want and whether the bar is seen from both sides, and tell us who is building the frame and when it will be complete. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. 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.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The rear extension is usually the newest and truest part of the building, so it is the older half of the kitchen that gives the trouble. 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. A bar top is judged from a stool, not from the doorway.

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. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. A red route buys minutes and a bar top needs hours.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. 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. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. 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 notch in a bar top is drawn with its support beside it.

Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. 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. Leaning is a sideways load and framing has to answer for it.