Stone bar tops in Lea Bridge

Yes. Lea Bridge is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E5. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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. Trestles outside beat balancing a top on a half-built frame. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The scullery floor was quarry tile bedded on concrete and it is often still under a laminate, sitting lower than the boards in the room it now joins. 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. A bar in a small room is drawn for the stools it will take. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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 is set to one datum along its own length.

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. Stools and back shelving come in after the stone is down. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. 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 offcut from a bar sink leaves in the van.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Repeated bars get one drawing and one steel schedule. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. 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. The bar is set out from the seat and worked back to the units. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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 frame is made true before the stone is measured. 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. Where the provider has set the specification the material choice was made once for a great many kitchens, and the useful work is meeting it exactly rather than proposing something else on the day. 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.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. 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 foot rail is planned with the frame, not bolted on later.

There is nothing to pay before the template visit. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Crittall windows were swapped for plastic ones in openings that were made good rather than rebuilt, which leaves reveals that are neither straight nor equal. 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. The bar is set level to itself and packed off the frame.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. 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. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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. Anything that flexes under the nose shows up at the join.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The support has to be specified to whoever is building the frame before it is boarded up, since steel let in afterwards means taking the front of the bar apart again. An overhang on a plan is not an overhang with steel under it.