Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Aldersbrook

Yes. Aldersbrook is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E12. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. A booked window suits a bathroom better than it suits a kitchen. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The kitchen occupies the ground floor of the addition with a garden door at the far end, so there is a second way in that is narrower than the front door and a great deal shorter. Either way the walls are thin, the floor is boards over shallow joists and nothing meets at a right angle, so the vanity is scribed at both ends and the unit is fixed back to the wall as well as standing on the floor. Square rooms make short work of a vanity template. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. Nothing in a bathroom is square, and the top has to be.

A step up off the pavement means the piece is lifted to the threshold before it is carried anywhere, and that first lift is the one that wants four hands. A vanity is the one piece of stone that route will not usually defeat, because a top cut to a standard unit depth weighs what one person can manage. The piece is carried by its long edges, never by the aperture. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. A bathroom booked on its own rarely fills a day, so it can be put into whichever part of the day the street is easiest. The shelves come in with the top so nobody returns for them.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement. 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 new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Where several bathrooms are done in one building the tops come off one slab run, because two greys from two batches sit badly on adjoining floors. One drawing per bathroom, however alike they look. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. A house divided into flats needs a vanity for each of them, and small repeated pieces are the one case where buying a whole slab makes sense. A second bathroom is worth ordering with the first.

A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. That shape decides what is left on the slab when the kitchen has been cut, and what is left on the slab is where most vanity tops come from. Ordered later, the batch match is a gamble rather than a plan. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. A vanity has no depth to lose, so where a kitchen run would take a ten millimetre scribe without noticing, a shallow top cannot spare it. A low window over the basin caps the splash return. Have the vanity unit fixed and levelled, and the basin and tap on site, before the templater arrives, and tell us what is inside any boxing. 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. Who is paying decides the material here more than anywhere else, because a vanity is small enough that an expensive stone stops being an expensive decision. Quartz in a let bathroom, because nothing needs sealing.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. A wall-hung unit puts the whole weight into the wall rather than onto the floor, so what the wall is built of stops being a detail. Templated off the fitted unit, never off the bathroom plan.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. The chimney breast has almost always been taken out of the kitchen with the stack left standing above it, so that bay of wall is newer plasterwork on a different plane. The bathroom in one of these is usually a later addition over the back kitchen, so the walls are thinner, the floor moves and a vanity has to sit level in a room that is not. A large bathroom is where a double vanity becomes possible.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. 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. Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. The offcut decides the colour more often than the brochure does.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. What the route really decides for a bathroom is the shelving and the window board, since long thin pieces are the ones that break when they are twisted round a turn. A cloakroom under the stairs is a short carry into a tight room.