Stone bar tops in Queenhithe

Yes. Queenhithe is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC4V, EC4R. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. 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 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. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

These flats are built with a floating floor over a concrete slab for acoustic reasons, and it deflects slightly under the weight of a stone island. The carcasses are thin cam-lock boxes that will not take a leaning load on their own, so flat steel is let into them flush with the top of the frame before any stone goes on, rather than corbels being screwed to the front afterwards. Noggins first, brackets second, stone last. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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. What carries the overhang is fixed to structure, not to lining.

A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. 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. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. 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.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. 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. A bar goes in last, so it is measured last. A specification repeated across several plots has to be repeatable, which quietly rules out the natural stones where no two slabs match. 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. What gets leaned on gets specified for leaning.

Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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 corbel never lands where a knee goes. Send the peninsula dimensions including how far the top is meant to project, the stool count, and the internal dimensions of the service lift. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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. The bar is packed level off the frame, not off the floor.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. 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. A deep apron takes knee room away quietly.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. A balcony door is the only other opening in the flat and it leads nowhere useful, so everything comes in through the front door. What gets called a bar in a flat like this is usually the end of a peninsula with stools pushed under it, and the overhang was drawn long before anyone worked out what carries it. The riser gets notched around, not built away from.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. A separate bar in the same room still takes its services from the same run, so the waste, the socket and the water are set out with the kitchen even though the joinery is not. Support follows the seating plan along the whole nose.