Stone bar tops in Pollards Hill

Yes. Pollards Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW16, CR4. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. 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. The van stands for the frame as well as the top. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Ceilings sit at about two point three metres and the head of the window is close under them, so a unit over the window has very little wall to hold onto. Rooms in this stock are compact, so a bar usually replaces a table rather than sitting alongside one, and it is drawn for two or three stools with enough floor left to get past them. A garage floor slopes and the frame takes that up. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. 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.

An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. 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. 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. A bar fit is a day, not a drop.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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. What was drawn and what was built are compared at template. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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 templated after the joinery has stopped moving.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. 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 nose line is drawn first and everything works back from it. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. 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. A column in the middle of a bar is a decision, not a surprise. Send a photograph of every corner of the room so we can see the boxings, the length you want, and how many stools you expect to use. Method statements, insurance certificates and named operatives are wanted before a crew is cleared to attend, all of which is routine when it is asked for a week out. Where the person choosing it is not the person who will lean on it, the seating height is set to a standard rather than to whoever happens to be standing in the room. A quote for a bar names who is providing the frame.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Nothing changes hands until after the template. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Dense concrete and blockwork mean the wall cannot be chased back or packed out, so the stone carries the scribe. 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. A bar top is a structural piece with a polished face on it.

Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. 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. The stone is cut to the obstruction as found.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. 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. A radius on a walked-past corner is agreed at drawing stage.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. 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. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. 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. What carries the overhang is fixed to structure, not to lining.