Stone bar tops in Honor Oak

Yes. Honor Oak is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE23. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. Bar tops are set once, so the day is planned to allow it. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These were built with generous room sizes for their date, so a peninsula fits where a speculative house of the same age would not take one. 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. The back of a freestanding bar is finished like the front. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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 support plan is drawn at the same time as the cut-out.

Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. 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. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. Where the bay is timed, the support goes in first.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop templating. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. 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. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. 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. The overhang is checked against the frame that exists.

Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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 will not correct a frame that is out of true. 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. Planned programmes run several kitchens in sequence, so template, fabrication and fitting move as a rolling operation and one uncollected key holds up more than one flat. 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. Consent for a structural fixing comes before the fitting date.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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. Fixings go into timber that was put there for them.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Suction lifters earn their keep on a straight flight and become a liability on a winder, where a handle standing out from the face is one more thing to catch on a wall. 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. Suction pads go on the polished face, never on the nose.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. A minority of these are non-traditional precast types, and in those the inside face of the outer wall is a panel between columns rather than a masonry wall. The one advantage here is the fabric: dense blockwork holds a fixing properly, which makes a wall-carried front edge realistic where a stud partition would not allow it at all. Where the walls give nothing, the bar stands on its own.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Windows and doors were replaced across whole streets on one programme, so the kitchen window is a plastic frame in the old opening with a deep lined reveal. 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 long counter is a beam before it is a surface.