Stone bar tops in Sanderstead

Yes. Sanderstead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR2. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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. Steel and corbels are unloaded before the stone is. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

A side door into a lobby with a cloakroom off it is the standard arrangement, so there is a second way in that misses the hall altogether. The side passage is usually wide enough for a full length to reach the room, so piece length is decided by the slab and by what the frame will carry rather than by the front door. The frame is built to the room and the stone answers to the frame. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. Cellar bars go down a flight, which is the harder direction. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. 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 bar top waits on the van until the frame is level.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. Frames get opened up again when the support was left out.

It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. 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 runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

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. 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. Confirm the finished height you want and whether the bar is seen from both sides, and tell us who is building the frame and when it will be complete. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. 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. A quote for a bar names who is providing the frame.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. 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. 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 frame is made true before the stone is measured.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. The seating side is the part that decides the piece, because a stool at the open end puts a load on a corner that a wall would otherwise have been carrying. Two heights means two edge profiles and a spine between them.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. Front tier and back tier are carried and set as two pieces.

Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. A licensed room sets the hours and the parking has to agree.