Stone bar tops in Ravenscourt Park

Yes. Ravenscourt Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Estate roads inside a controlled zone are sometimes managed privately rather than by the council, which changes who has to be asked. 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. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

A large villa has wide doors, a generous hall and somewhere to park, so the joins that go in are chosen for layout rather than forced by the route. Lengths run past what a single slab gives, so a break is designed in from the start, placed over support and kept clear of every stool position before anything is nested. A bar built as furniture is templated as furniture. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. Steel spans what a carcass cannot.

Timber nosings chip under a slipped edge, so the treads are covered along the whole flight rather than only at the landings. 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 frame goes up first so the top has somewhere to land. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. 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 especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop replacement. 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. 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. A bar is the piece most likely to be added after the kitchen. 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. Harder use and stronger cleaning products push the answer towards porcelain or sintered stone, because a resin-bound surface is the one that shows what has been left standing on it. Frames get opened up again when the support was left out.

Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. 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 seating side decides the piece; the wall side never does. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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 is set to one datum along its own length. Send the bar layout with the rear counter and any sink marked, the seating side and stool count, and the edge profile you want on the front. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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. Nothing structural is drilled on an assumption.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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 frame is made true before the stone is measured.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. 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. Two heights means two edge profiles and a spine between them.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. Packaging and offcuts go back the way the top came in.

An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. These kitchens are big rooms with long perimeter runs and an island, so level has to hold across the whole floor rather than along one wall. There is normally room here for a genuine bar rather than a seating overhang, which means a rear counter, a small sink and a run of shelving all drawn as one piece of joinery. What the room will take decides the stool count.