Stone bar tops in Neasden

Yes. Neasden is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW10, NW2. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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 parking is tight the hardware walks in ahead of the stone. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The back door frequently opens straight into the kitchen, which is the best carry route in the house and the one people forget to mention. 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. Deep skirtings push the frame forward and the top covers it. 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. 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 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. Where the way in is awkward the bar is drawn in tiers. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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 bar top left on a pavement is a bar top with a chipped nose.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. 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. A bar goes in last, so it is measured last. 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. What gets leaned on gets specified for leaning.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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 seating side decides the piece; the wall side never does. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. 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. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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 person leaning on it is the person it was drawn for.

Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Solid brick with a sand and cement render is firm to work against and reliably out of plumb across the length of a run. 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. A bar top is a structural piece with a polished face on it.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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. The stone is cut to the obstruction as found.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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. What carries the overhang is fixed to structure, not to lining.

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. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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 frame goes up first so the top has somewhere to land.