Stone bar tops in Sudbury Hill

Yes. Sudbury Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA1, HA2. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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 licensed room sets the hours and the parking has to agree. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A townhouse is tall and narrow with the kitchen at the bottom, so every piece goes down a staircase rather than along a hall. 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. Blockwork holds a fixing and plasterboard does not. 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. 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. Noggins go into a stud wall before a bar is fixed to it.

Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. 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. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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. Nothing is rushed off a tail lift onto an unsupported nose.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop replacement. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on 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. 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. A late bar is a separate visit and the quote says so. 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. 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. Nothing is assumed about a frame somebody else built.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. 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. The stool positions go on the drawing before the join does. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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 sloping floor is a problem for the stools, not the top. 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. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. 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 bar outlasts whoever specified it.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. The stair to the lower ground floor has a turn at the bottom and a low soffit above it, and both are measured before anything is nested. 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. A trade bar and a home bar are different pieces of work.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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. What the bar wraps around is templated, never assumed square.

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. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. A counter fixed back to lightweight framing takes a sideways push as well as a downward load, and framing built for neither gets noggins let into it first. The support plan is drawn at the same time as the cut-out.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. 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. A flush bar is one plane and twice the overhang problem.