Stone bar tops in Tokyngton and Brent Park

Yes. Tokyngton and Brent Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA9, NW10. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. 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. A bar fit is a day, not a drop. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Front doors off the deck open into a lobby barely wider than the door itself, and the turn out of it is a right angle. Rooms in this stock are compact, so a bar usually replaces a table rather than sitting alongside one, and it is drawn for two or three stools with enough floor left to get past them. What the room will take decides the stool count. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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. Every obstruction under the top is a seating decision too.

Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. 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. Stools and back shelving come in after the stone is down. 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. Steel and corbels are unloaded before the stone is.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating. That is the local housing talking rather than anything about the job. It is priced, cut and fitted no differently here than anywhere else we cover. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. 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 bar goes in last, so it is measured last. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. 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. What gets leaned on gets specified for leaning.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. 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. Where the two levels meet is a detail, not an afterthought. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. 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. The riser is boxed to a line the stone can follow. Send a photograph of every corner of the room so we can see the boxings, the length you want, and how many stools you expect to use. A leaseholder paying for their own kitchen inside managed stock still needs the freeholder to consent, and that consent is about the building and the common parts rather than about the worktop. 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.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. 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 bar top is heavier than it looks because the apron is solid.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Deck access means a long open walkway from the lift or the stair to the front door, and that walk happens with the piece on edge in whatever weather there is. Space is tight, so a bar here tends to replace a table rather than sit alongside one, and the piece is drawn for two or three stools rather than a row of them. Noggins first, brackets second, stone last.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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. Stools need floor as well as knee room, and both are drawn.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. A maisonette puts the kitchen on one of two levels, so an internal staircase may be part of the route as well as the communal one. Dense blockwork holds a fixing properly, which is the one thing that makes a wall-supported nose realistic in this stock. The riser gets notched around, not built away from.