Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Bayswater

Yes. Bayswater is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W2. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

A conversion takes kitchen waste to a stack added to the outside of the building, which fixes the sink position long before anyone draws a layout. 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. Where the floor is solid, the unit sits where it is put. 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. Templated off the fitted unit, never off the bathroom plan.

A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full flight. 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 staircase is the last stage of every bathroom carry. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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. A bay for twenty minutes is enough for a vanity.

No, not particularly, and it would be easy to say otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands 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. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. 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. A second bathroom is worth ordering with the first. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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. Small tops are where a slab finally gets fully used.

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. Where the kitchen eats the slab, the bathroom buys its own. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

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. The scribe on a vanity is measured in depth it cannot spare. 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. Quartz is the sensible default in a rental: nothing to seal, nothing to maintain, and nothing an incoming tenant needs briefing on. 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. Access to a tenanted bathroom is arranged, not assumed.

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. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Where the vanity is fitted alongside a kitchen the van is standing anyway, which is a good part of why the two rooms are worth ordering together. We arrive with the offcut pieces already labelled by room.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. The thickness follows the kitchen unless you ask otherwise.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. The boxed soil stack in the corner is the usual version of it upstairs, and a top that notches round one loses depth exactly where the basin wanted it. A sloping floor is corrected under the unit, not under the stone.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. Where the kitchen swallows the whole slab there is no offcut worth having, and the vanity then has to be priced against material bought for itself. A double vanity is nested like a worktop, not like an offcut.