Stone bar tops in South Wimbledon

Yes. South Wimbledon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW19. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. A bar top left on a pavement is a bar top with a chipped nose. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Many have had the ground floor chimney breast removed to gain three hundred millimetres, and the gained strip is newer blockwork standing proud of the old plaster. A bar in one of these houses is either the end of a through-lounge or a cellar conversion, and the two behave differently. Beer lines and a glasswasher change what goes under the top. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. 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 frame is made true before the stone is measured.

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. 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. A bonded apron makes the piece deeper than the doorway expects. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. What comes off the van first is whatever holds the top up.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. 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. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. 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. Repeated bars get one drawing and one steel schedule. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. 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. Sintered stone earns its keep where the cleaning is harsh.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. 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.

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. 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. Anything that flexes under the nose shows up at the join. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. Who signs off the steel is settled before it is ordered.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. 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. Support under the overhang comes first on the drawing.

Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. 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. 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. 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. A column in the middle of a bar is a decision, not a surprise.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The side return was an outside toilet and a coal store before it was ever a kitchen, and the walls left over from that are half a brick thick. None of that stops a bar being fitted level, but it does mean the top is set to a datum of its own and packed off the frame rather than followed down to the floor. A bar top is judged from a stool, not from the doorway.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. 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 frame is built in the room; only the top has to travel.