Stone bar tops in Regent's Park

Yes. Regent's Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW1. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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 measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Original panelling and shutter boxes stand out from the structural wall, so the face the units meet is joinery rather than plaster. A bar in one of these houses is either the end of a through-lounge or a cellar conversion, and the two behave differently. Where the walls give nothing, the bar stands on its own. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. 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. A notch in a bar top is drawn with its support beside it.

Carrying down a flight is not the easier direction, because the weight runs ahead of the crew and whoever is at the bottom has no way of stopping a slip. 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. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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. 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 templating, worktop design & quotation 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. 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, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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. Leaning is a sideways load and framing has to answer for it. Send the length you want, the number of stools, and photographs walking from the pavement through to the room, including the cellar stair if the bar is going down there. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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. Seating height is set to a person or to a standard, and stated.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. The stone comes off last because it goes down last.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. 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 design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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. Nothing under the nose is allowed to be in the way.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The original front door is narrow and the hall is often the only way in, which puts a ceiling on the longest single piece. 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. Where the weight lands is worked out before the piece is cut.

Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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 bar on an end takes the corner load a wall used to take.