Stone bar tops in Old Malden

Yes. Old Malden is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT4. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Kingston upon Thames. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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. What comes off the van first is whatever holds the top up. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The larder had a slate or terrazzo shelf on its cold wall, heavy enough that it usually got left in place when everything else went. 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. Two tiers where a single piece will not reach. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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. The stone is cut to the obstruction as found.

The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. 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. Nothing about a front edge survives being dragged. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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. The van stands for the frame as well as the top.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. Batch work still gets its own template per room. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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 serving counter and a bar are one piece under two loads.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. 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. Two heights means two edge profiles and a spine between them. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. What carries the overhang is fixed to structure, not to lining. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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. Repairability at the nose is a fair question to ask early.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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 corbels go in before the top does, and both use the same door.

Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. 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. Clear length between the returns sets the stool count.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Ceilings are lath and plaster at the front and plasterboard in the extension, and the join between the two marks where the original back wall stood. 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. People push against the front edge, so the front edge gets the steel.

Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. The steel is priced with the bar, not after it.