Stone bar tops in Soho

Yes. Soho is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W1D, W1F. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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 stone comes off last because it goes down last. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A basement kitchen has a flagged or concrete floor laid straight onto the ground, so it is solid, cold and rarely within ten millimetres of level. 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 apron is bonded on the bench, never built up in the room. 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. 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. The bar is packed level off the frame, not off the floor.

A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full flight. 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. Nothing about a front edge survives being dragged. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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 short unload is still a long fit on a bar.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. 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. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. 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. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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.

An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. 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. Nothing sits over a join that somebody leans on. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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 notch in a bar top is drawn with its support beside 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. 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. The support is specified for the next occupant as well.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. Permits are sorted before a corbel is drilled.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where the stairwell is narrow enough that the stone travels on edge the polished face runs within an inch of the plaster, so the walls get boarded as well as the steps. 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. The corbels go in before the top does, and both use the same door.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. 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. The nose is designed before the colour is.

How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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.