Stone bar tops in Lisson Grove

Yes. Lisson Grove is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW8, NW1. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. 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. The stone comes off last because it goes down last. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

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. 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. 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. Leaning is a sideways load and framing has to answer for it.

Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. 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. Suction pads go on the polished face, never on the nose. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. 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. A short unload is still a long fit on a bar.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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 overhang is checked against the frame that exists. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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. A bar in constant use is a maintenance decision as well.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. 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 breakfast counter and a trade bar are not the same brief. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

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. Nothing under the nose is allowed to be in the way. 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. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. 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.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Handrails, mirrors and a sloping ceiling panel all eat into the usable diagonal, and none of them appear on a lift specification sheet. 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. The route is measured to the deepest part of the piece.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. 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. One detail across several rooms keeps the fixings the same.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. 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. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. 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 raised tier is a second piece, priced and drawn as one.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. 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. Dense blockwork holds a fixing properly, which is the one thing that makes a wall-supported nose realistic in this stock. A long counter is a beam before it is a surface.