Stone bar tops in Malden Rushett

Yes. Malden Rushett is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT9. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Kingston upon Thames. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. 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. One van, one bar, one visit. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Deep original skirting is often left in behind the units, standing them off the wall, so the back edge of the stone is plotted where the carcasses actually sit. A bar in one of these houses is either the end of a through-lounge or a cellar conversion, and the two behave differently. A garage floor slopes and the frame takes that up. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. Anything that flexes under the nose shows up at the join.

A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. 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. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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 parking is tight the hardware walks in ahead of the stone.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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. Sintered stone earns its keep where the cleaning is harsh. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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. 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. 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.

Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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. A column in the middle of a bar is a decision, not a surprise. Send the length you want, the number of stools, and photographs walking from the pavement through to the room, including the cellar stair if the bar is going down there. 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. The specification answers to the use, not to the brochure.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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. Where the way in is awkward the bar is drawn in tiers.

Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. These were built late enough to have a damp course and proper footings, so the front of the house is close to true and the rear addition holding the kitchen is the part that has dropped. The floor is suspended timber, so the frame is fixed back to a wall as well as bearing down on the boards, or the whole thing shifts when somebody leans on the nose. Deep skirtings push the frame forward and the top covers it.

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. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. 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. A bar top left on a pavement is a bar top with a chipped nose.

What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. The kitchen occupies the ground floor of the addition with a garden door at the far end, so there is a second way in that is narrower than the front door and a great deal shorter. Original walls give nothing straight to work to, which is why a bar here is built as its own frame and scribed at the back rather than trusted to the plaster behind it. Beer lines and a glasswasher change what goes under the top.