Stone bar tops in Woodside Park

Yes. Woodside Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N12. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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. The offcut from a bar sink leaves in the van. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Handmade brick and lime plaster move visibly along a run, and a straight-cut back edge shows it immediately. There is normally room here for a genuine bar rather than a seating overhang, which means a rear counter, a small sink and a run of shelving being drawn as one piece of joinery with the stone reading across all of it. A cellar bar is set to the headroom first. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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 bar is packed level off the frame, not off the floor.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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. Where the route is tight the bar gains a join behind a corbel. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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 suspension is booked for the fitting day, not the delivery hour.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop fabrication. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. The evening use is what the piece is sized for. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. Bars are quoted as their own item, never as extra metreage.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. 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. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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. A notch in a bar top is drawn with its support beside it. Send the bar layout with the rear counter and any sink marked, the seating side and stool count, and the edge profile you want on the front. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. 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.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. 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 polished front edge is protected from the tail lift to the frame.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. 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.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. Where the clock is running the frame is levelled and the steel is in before the top ever leaves the tail lift. Bar tops are set once, so the day is planned to allow it.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. 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.