Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Askew Road

Yes. Askew Road is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W12. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. A vanity fit is a short visit with one or two pieces in it, so the van stands only for as long as it takes to walk them in. Short jobs suffer most from a van that has to move. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

There is no back addition on these, so the kitchen is the original rear room and the run is one wall long with a door at each end of it. The bathroom in one of these is almost never original: it is a later room over the back addition, or a bedroom divided in two. A bathroom carved out of a bedroom keeps the bedroom window. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. A low window over the basin caps the splash return.

The hall is the only way in and out for whoever lives there, so it is cleared and then kept clear for as long as pieces are moving. 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. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. The whole bathroom fits on a trolley in one load.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. 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. Work of that kind brings en-suites with it, and an en-suite vanity is a smaller piece again carrying exactly the same four operations. One drawing per bathroom, however alike they look. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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. A second bathroom is worth ordering with the first.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. 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. A vanity is nested last and cut from what is left. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

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. 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. Templated off the fitted unit, never off the bathroom plan. 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. Marble on a vanity marks, and that is said before it is cut.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. The scribe on a vanity is measured in depth it cannot spare.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. That rear wall carries the back door and the only window, which leaves very little uninterrupted length for a sink run. 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. Deep reveals turn a window board into a real piece of stone.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Many have had the ground floor chimney breast removed to gain three hundred millimetres, and the gained strip is newer blockwork standing proud of the old plaster. 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. Concrete walls take a bracket well and a chase badly.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. Where the floor falls away the unit is packed level first, because a top that follows a sloping floor announces it against the tile joints behind. A sloping floor is corrected under the unit, not under the stone.