Stone bar tops in Upton Park

Yes. Upton Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E13, E6. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Where an event closes the road entirely, the van cannot be moved once it is in, which is a different problem from not being able to park at all. 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. Where parking is tight the hardware walks in ahead of the stone. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Rooflights over the rear bring light straight down onto the worktop, which shows a polished finish and any step at a join. What is called a bar in a flat like this is usually the end of a peninsula with stools pushed under it, and the projection was drawn on the layout long before anybody worked out what would carry it. Blockwork holds a fixing and plasterboard does not. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. 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.

Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on 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. Steel for the overhang is carried in and fixed before the stone. A market day closes the street to traffic for the morning and hands it back in the afternoon, which moves the visit rather than cancelling it. 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 top left on a pavement is a bar top with a chipped nose.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop design & quotation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. Extended households run kitchens hard, and that pushes the specification towards granite or sintered stone rather than a light quartz. 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. An overhang on a plan is not an overhang with steel under it. Two households cooking in one kitchen means two of most things, and the run has to carry a second sink or a second oven without losing its working length. 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. A bar goes in last, so it is measured last.

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. 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. Where the two levels meet is a detail, not an afterthought. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. 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. Nothing under the nose is allowed to be in the way. Send the peninsula dimensions including how far the top is meant to project, the stool count, and the internal dimensions of the service lift. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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 in constant hands wants a finish that does not mark.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. The seating side is the part that decides the piece, because a stool at the open end puts a load on a corner that a wall would otherwise have been carrying. Stools need floor as well as knee room, and both are drawn.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Plasterboard partitions mean light scribes and clean joins, and the fabrication effort moves to the visible faces instead. 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. Nothing about a bar top is designed around a wall.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. A timed school street shuts the road either side of the school day, so the van goes in between those two windows or it does not go in. 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. What comes off the van first is whatever holds the top up.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. A separate bar in the same room still takes its services from the same run, so the waste, the socket and the water are set out with the kitchen even though the joinery is not. The bar length answers to the seats, not to the wall behind it.