Stone bar tops in Shooters Hill

Yes. Shooters Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE18. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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 bar top waits on the van until the frame is level. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The kitchen is a rear service room with a scullery and a larder off it, and both have usually survived as separate spaces. 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. Noggins first, brackets second, stone last. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the 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. A notch in a bar top is drawn with its support beside it.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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 a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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. A licensed room sets the hours and the parking has to agree.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop fabrication. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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 budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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.

A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. 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. Two heights means two edge profiles and a spine between them. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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. 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 decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. 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. A quote for a bar names who is providing the frame.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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.

Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. 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. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. 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. 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.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The old scullery is a step down from the main room and the pantry beyond it is a step down again. 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. What holds the front edge up matters more than what the slab cost.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Windows are low and wide with deep timber cills and leaded lights, so a run under one meets joinery rather than plaster. 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. The riser gets notched around, not built away from.