Stone bar tops in Putney

Yes. Putney is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW15. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. Bar tops are set once, so the day is planned to allow it. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

External walls are thick and the run under the window sits in a deep reveal that has to be templated rather than assumed square. Thick walls and deep skirtings stand the frame off the plaster, and the top is drawn to cover that gap rather than the frame being forced back into it. The back of a freestanding bar is finished like the front. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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.

Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. 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. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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. Where the bay is timed, the support goes in first.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. 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 work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. The steel is priced with the bar, not after it. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. Drinks left standing decide the material more than looks do.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. 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 bar length answers to the seats, not to the wall behind it. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. 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. Confirm the working hours the block allows and the lift booking, and send the frame drawing with the finished height and the projection marked on it. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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 stone comes off last because it goes down last.

Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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. Fixings go into timber that was put there for them.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Thick external walls, deep window reveals and boxed risers mean the runs are templated to what is there rather than to a rectangle. 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 judged from a stool, not from the doorway.