Stone bar tops in Kensal Rise

Yes. Kensal Rise is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW10. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. 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. Where the bay is timed, the support goes in first. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Front doors off the deck open into a lobby barely wider than the door itself, and the turn out of it is a right angle. 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. Where the walls give nothing, the bar stands on its own. 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. 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 bar top will not correct a frame that is out of true.

Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. 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 waterfall end travels as its own piece and is bonded in place. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. 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. The stone comes off last because it goes down last.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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. Sintered stone earns its keep where the cleaning is harsh. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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. An overhang on a plan is not an overhang with steel under it.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. 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. One level or two, and it is decided early. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. Fixings go into timber that was put there for them. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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. Stools change; the nose does not.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. The knee space is measured before the bracket is specified.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. 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 breakfast counter and a trade bar are not the same brief.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. A counter fixed back to lightweight framing takes a sideways push as well as a downward load, and framing built for neither gets noggins let into it first. Where the wall is bowed the rear rail takes it up.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. A top with a bonded apron on the front arrives deeper than a worktop and behaves like a beam, so there is no easing it round a turn at all. Suction pads go on the polished face, never on the nose.