Stone bar tops in Wapping

Yes. Wapping is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1W. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. 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. What comes off the van first is whatever holds the top up. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Windows are large industrial openings with deep sills, and a run finishing at one meets a reveal a full brick deep. This is the stock where a bar is most often a working one, with a glasswasher, a waste, a drip tray and beer lines all needing to be planned under the top before the piece is drawn. Deep skirtings push the frame forward and the top covers it. Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. 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 bar top is set to one datum along its own length.

The ground below stays closed off for the whole lift, which on a shared forecourt means telling whoever controls that ground well beforehand. 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. Nothing about a front edge survives being dragged. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. 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. The van stands for the frame as well as the top.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication, worktop design & quotation and worktop installation. 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. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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 downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. 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 overhang is drawn before the layout is signed off. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A brick pier standing into the run divides it in two, and the join goes against the pier where a clear wall would have needed no join at all. 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 frame is made true before the stone is measured. Send the bar layout with the glasswasher, sink and waste positions marked, and tell us the route from where a van can stand to the room. Where a letting agent sits between us and the owner the approval passes through two sets of hands, so a quote has to be clear enough to forward without a covering explanation. 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. Seating height is set to a person or to a standard, and stated.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Services coming up through a floor slab mean the island cannot move to suit the stone, so the stone is cut to suit the island. 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. The stone follows the frame, and the frame follows the stools.

The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. 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. A bar fit is a day, not a drop.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Services run on the surface in these buildings, so conduit and pipework cross the wall behind the units and stand proud of it. That changes the order of the job: the services are set out first, the frame is built round them, and the stone is machined to suit what is already there. The break sits over support and clear of every seat.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. 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 bar top is a shape decision with steel attached to it.