Stone bar tops in Plashet

Yes. Plashet is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E6, E7. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. 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 frame is checked before anything comes off the van. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Kitchens in the upper flats often sit in the return wing at half-landing level, so there are three or four steps inside the flat before the room is reached at all. In a cellar the headroom fixes the counter height first and everything else works back from it, and the stair down is the tightest part of the route because stone carried downward is harder to control than stone carried up. Wide doors make piece length a choice rather than a limit. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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 bar is packed level off the frame, not off the floor.

A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. 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 nose is the corner that gets caught, so it travels padded. 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. 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 red route buys minutes and a bar top needs hours.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. 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. Drinks left standing decide the material more than looks do. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. 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 is the piece most likely to be added after the kitchen.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. 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. Clear length between the returns sets the stool count. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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 notch in a bar top is drawn with its support beside it. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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. Fixings into structure are agreed before they are drilled.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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. Leaning is a sideways load and framing has to answer for it.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. 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. The stone follows the frame, and the frame follows the stools.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Where the walls have been dry-lined over the old lath there is a void behind the board and no solid fixing until a batten is found. None of that stops a bar being fitted level, but it does mean the top is set to a datum of its own and packed off the frame rather than followed down to the floor. Where the weight lands is worked out before the piece is cut.

If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. 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. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. A counter fixed back to lightweight framing takes a sideways push as well as a downward load, and framing built for neither gets noggins let into it first. Nothing under the nose is allowed to be in the way.