Stone bar tops in Shortlands

Yes. Shortlands is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR2. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. One van, one bar, one visit. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. A bar in one of these houses is either the end of a through-lounge or a cellar conversion, and the two behave differently. The frame is built to the room and the stone answers to the frame. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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 corbel never lands where a knee goes.

A step up off the pavement means the piece is lifted to the threshold before it is carried anywhere, and that first lift is the one that wants four hands. 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. Steel for the overhang is carried in and fixed before the stone. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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. Where parking is tight the hardware walks in ahead of the stone.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. 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. Frames get opened up again when the support was left out. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. Repeat detail, single survey, matched batch.

On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. 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. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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. The bar is packed level off the frame, not off the floor. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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. The support is specified for the next occupant as well.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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. A notch in a bar top is drawn with its support beside it.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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 bar top left on a pavement is a bar top with a chipped nose.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. 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. Clear length between the returns sets the stool count.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. 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. A bonded apron makes the piece deeper than the doorway expects.