Stone bar tops in Manor Park

Yes. Manor Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E12. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. 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. A short unload is still a long fit on a bar. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

A villa cut into flats leaves kitchens in rooms that were never kitchens, with services run to wherever they could physically be made to reach. A bar in one of these houses is either the end of a through-lounge or a cellar conversion, and the two behave differently. Deep skirtings push the frame forward and the top covers it. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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 column in the middle of a bar is a decision, not a surprise.

Spindles and a newel cap stand proud of the string, so the usable width on a turn is measured to the handrail rather than to the wall behind it. 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. The route is measured to the deepest part of the piece. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. 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. Permits are sorted before a corbel is drilled.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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. What gets leaned on gets specified for leaning. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. Batch work still gets its own template per room.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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 flush bar is one plane and twice the overhang problem. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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 stone is cut to the obstruction as found. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. The top step is rarely the end of it, because a door swinging out onto the landing has to be held back before a piece can come off the flight. 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. Stools and back shelving come in after the stone is down.

Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. 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. 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. Where the bar is going into a cellar the pieces travel downward rather than up, and carrying stone down a flight gives a crew less control over it, not more. A bar top is heavier than it looks because the apron is solid.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The seating side is the part that decides the piece, because a stool at the open end puts a load on a corner that a wall would otherwise have been carrying. Knee room is measured from the frame, not from the nose.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. What carries the overhang is fixed to structure, not to lining.