Stone bar tops in Underhill

Yes. Underhill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN5. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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. Two trips to the van, one for hardware and one for stone. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The classic arrangement is the original back room with a later extension bolted onto it, so the kitchen is two ages of building in one room. 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 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 stone is cut to the obstruction as found.

Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. 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. The nose is the corner that gets caught, so it travels padded. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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. Trestles outside beat balancing a top on a half-built frame.

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 installation and worktop templating. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. Nothing is assumed about a frame somebody else built. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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. The overhang is checked against the frame that exists.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. 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. A flush bar is one plane and twice the overhang problem. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. What carries the overhang is fixed to structure, not to lining. 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. Method statements, insurance certificates and named operatives are wanted before a crew is cleared to attend, all of which is routine when it is asked for a week out. 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.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. 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 rear extension is usually the newest and truest part of the building, so it is the older half of the kitchen that gives the trouble. 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. The front edge takes the wear, so the front edge takes the detail.

Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. A side alley and a back door mean most pieces go in whole, and it is the alley width rather than the front door that decides it. A bar here usually appears at the open end of a knocked-through kitchen and dining room, where it is read from both sides and both sides have to be finished to the same standard. 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. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. The offcut from a bar sink leaves in the van.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The scullery and the kitchen were knocked into one at some point, and the stub of the old dividing wall is still there under the plaster. What carries a bar top here is rarely a kitchen carcass, so the framing underneath gets looked at before anything is measured across the top of it. Nothing about a bar top is designed around a wall.