Stone bar tops in Temple Fortune

Yes. Temple Fortune is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW11. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. 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. A licensed room sets the hours and the parking has to agree. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Where the dividing wall has come out there is a steel over the opening and a nib of the old wall left at each end, and a run turning that corner has to clear both nibs. These bars nearly always land at the open end of a knocked-through kitchen and dining room, which means the piece is read from both sides and both sides get the same edge treatment rather than one being left as a cut face. A garage floor slopes and the frame takes that up. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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.

Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. 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 bar top will not be flexed round a turn, however light it looks. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. 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. Nothing is rushed off a tail lift onto an unsupported nose.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. A late bar is a separate visit and the quote says so. 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. 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. Nothing is assumed about a frame somebody else built.

A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. 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. An overhang on two sides is two separate calculations. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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. Leaning is a sideways load and framing has to answer for it. Confirm the finished height you want and whether the bar is seen from both sides, and tell us who is building the frame and when it will be complete. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. 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.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. 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. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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 nose is the corner that gets caught, so it travels padded.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. The windows were steel to begin with and have been swapped for plastic in openings lined out to suit, so the reveal is now deeper than the brickwork behind it. The side passage is usually wide enough for a full length to reach the room, so piece length is decided by the slab and by what the frame will carry rather than by the front door. Beer lines and a glasswasher change what goes under the top.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. Two trips to the van, one for hardware and one for stone.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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.