Stone bar tops in Portsoken

Yes. Portsoken is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1, EC3N. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. A timed school street shuts the road either side of the school day, so the van goes in between those two windows or it does not go in. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These are small blocks with a single stair, no lift, and a communal door that will not stay open on its own. A bar in this stock is nearly always a short breakfast counter on the end of a run, and the end is exactly the point where the load lands with the least underneath it. The frame is built to the room and the stone answers to the frame. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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 support plan is drawn at the same time as the cut-out.

A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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. An event-day suspension can override a bay that is perfectly usable the rest of the week, so a booked space gets checked again nearer the time. 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. Permits are sorted before a corbel is drilled.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. 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. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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.

A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind 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. Clear length between the returns sets the stool count. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. 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 bar top will not correct a frame that is out of true. Tell us what the end of the run is built off, send the length and projection you want, and confirm whether there is rear access into the kitchen. Access is arranged through a managing agent or a scheme office rather than with the household directly, so a date gets confirmed once in writing and moving it costs a fortnight. 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.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. 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. Plaster over blockwork is thin and hollow in patches, so anything fixed back to the wall needs a sound spot found first. 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. Drinks stand on it for hours, which changes the material answer.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. The nose stays wrapped until the frame is ready for it.

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. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. A top with a bonded apron on the front arrives deeper than a worktop and behaves like a beam, so there is no easing it round a turn at all. The frame goes up first so the top has somewhere to land.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Small, roughly square kitchens with a back door and a window in the middle of the run: short lengths, few joins, and a lot to work around. What carries a bar top here is rarely a kitchen carcass, so the framing underneath gets looked at before anything is measured across the top of it. Corbels are a decision about how the piece looks from a seat.