Stone bar tops in Scrattons Farm

Yes. Scrattons Farm is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. 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. 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. Steel and corbels are unloaded before the stone is. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

These were built on a solid ground floor slab, so nothing bounces and nothing can be packed down, only up. Partitions are frequently lightweight, so anything fixed back to a wall gets noggins let into the framing before a bracket is offered up to it, and a fixing into plasterboard alone is not an option on a piece people push against. Deep skirtings push the frame forward and the top covers it. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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.

A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. 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. 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 replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. 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. 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. Frames get opened up again when the support was left out. 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. Repeat detail, single survey, matched batch.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. 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. One level or two, and it is decided early. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

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. Leaning is a sideways load and framing has to answer for it. Tell us what the end of the run is built off, send the length and projection you want, and confirm whether there is rear access into the kitchen. 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. 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.

Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. 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.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. 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. A breakfast counter and a trade bar are not the same brief.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. 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. The support has to be specified to whoever is building the frame before it is boarded up, since steel let in afterwards means taking the front of the bar apart again. The brief changes, but the nose still has to be carried.